Today, President von der Leyen held a videoconference with the CEOs of the pharmaceutical companies with which the European Commission has signed Advance Purchase Agreements, in the context of our Vaccines Strategy – BionNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Curevac and Sanofi. Commissioners Stella Kyriakides and Thierry Breton, the President‘s coronavirus special advisor Peter Piot and Moncef Slaoui, as well as the Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, Emer Cook, also attended. The aim of the videoconference was to launch the work on European bio-defence preparedness. The Commission will set up an EU Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), to deliver a more structured approach to pandemic preparedness. HERA will help anticipate threats and identify responses.
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Mirela Ciobanu & Dina-Perla Portnaar

Almost everyone agrees that 2020 has been a rough year. However, 2021 has not smoothed some of its roughness. Most of us continue working from home, having to balance family life with professional activities, dealing with a high degree of anxiety due to uncertainty of what is going to happen next. However, being able to take part in virtual events has helped us to stray in touch with our peers, to maintain a high level of engagement with our industries and to learn more about the topics that we are interested in – in this case how to fight financial crime and find the right business partner to assist your deal with financial crime from a compliance perspective.
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Law enforcement and judicial authorities worldwide have recently disrupted one of the most significant botnets of the past decade: EMOTET. Investigators have now taken control of its infrastructure in an international coordinated action. This operation is the result of a collaborative effort between authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Lithuania, Canada and Ukraine, with international activity coordinated by Europol and Eurojust. This operation was carried out in the framework of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT). Continue reading…

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) recently published a report that examines the potential implications of climate change for financial stability. The report analyses how climate-related risks might be transmitted across, and might be amplified by, the financial system, including across borders. It also sets out next steps for the FSB’s work in this area. Current central estimates of the impact of physical risks on asset prices appear relatively contained but may be subject to considerable tail risk. The manifestation of physical risks could lead to a sharp fall in asset prices and increase in uncertainty. A disorderly transition to a low carbon economy could also have a destabilising effect on the financial system. Continue reading…

The Commission recently proposed an update to the Council Recommendation of last October coordinating measures affecting free movement in the European Union. This is part of the Commission’s ongoing efforts to ensure better coordination and communication of travel-related measures at EU level. In light of new coronavirus variants and high numbers of new infections across many Member States, it is necessary to strongly discourage non-essential travel, while avoiding border closures or blanket travel bans and ensuring that the functioning of the Single Market and supply chains remain uninterrupted. Therefore, further targeted action to ensure a coordinated approach on measures restricting free movement within the EU is necessary. Continue reading…

The European Commission has fined Valve, owner of the online PC gaming platform “Steam”, and the five publishers Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax € 7.8 million for breaching EU antitrust rules. Valve and the publishers restricted cross-border sales of certain PC video games on the basis of the geographical location of users within the European Economic Area (‘EEA’), entering into, the so called “geo-blocking” practices. The fines for the publishers, totalling over €6 million, were reduced due to the companies’ cooperation with the Commission. Valve chose not to cooperate with the Commission and was fined over €1.6 million.
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by Dina-Perla Portnaar

Risk, governance and compliance in the financial sector remain our flagship. Banking and finance has been part of our DNA for many years. The publisher of the Risk & Compliance Platform Europe, Michel Klompmaker, used to be the publisher of a title – literally – called Banking & Finance. On top of that, the Risk & Compliance Platform Europe has a community of excellent relations with many leaders, top decision makers, professionals and regulators in the financial world. Also, in the past sixteen years, the domains in which I worked the most have been IT/tech and finance. With that said, some of our readers aren’t aware of the fact that the Risk & Compliance Platform Europe has a global community in all sorts of verticals. It focuses on risk and integrity in a broader sense – healthcare, export, logistics, customs, property and housing associations, entrepreneurship, government, managing consulting, social, society and so on and so forth. The field of risk and integrity opens up discussions on behaviour within a variety of private and public institutions and on an individual and collective level. The Risk & Compliance Platform Europe is not just about the business world. Continue reading…

We will now report on the outcome of the recent meeting of the Governing Council, which was also attended by the Commission Executive Vice-President, Mr. Dombrovskis. The start of vaccination campaigns across the euro area is an important milestone in the resolution of the ongoing health crisis. Nonetheless, the pandemic continues to pose serious risks to public health and to the euro area and global economies. The renewed surge in coronavirus (COVID-19) infections and the restrictive and prolonged containment measures imposed in many euro area countries are disrupting economic activity. Continue reading…

by Dina-Perla Portnaar

The Ashton Whiteley Scam illustrates how financial crime really works. Not a lot of personal cases were shared with the public before in order to make financial crime tangible. Here is an outline of the events given by one of the many victims of the Ashton Whiteley Scam that took place a couple of years ago. The man shared his story with me, which we will share in a couple of articles. Here is part one. Continue reading…