EU Lawmakers Want Anti-Money Laundering Rules To Cover NFTs

cryptonews.com:

With the European Union advancing work on new regulations that could exert a significant impact on the crypto industry, a group of members of the European Parliament have proposed an amendment to the bloc’s anti-money laundering (AML) legislation that would cover non-fungible token (NFT) trading platforms with its provisions.

The NFT-related amendment is part of a larger package of proposals submitted by European lawmakers, dubbed Preventing abuse of the financial system for money laundering or terrorism purposes.

The proposal was put forward by two green MEPs, Ernest Urtasun of Spain and Denmark’s Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, along with two socialist lawmakers, France’s Aurore Lalucq and Csaba Molnár of Hungary. Should this amendment be implemented into the final version of the AML bill, NFT platforms would become “obliged entities” covered by its rules.

The four MPs want the EU to extend the legislation’s coverage to “crypto-asset service providers, trading or acting as intermediaries for importing, minting, sale and purchase of unique and not fungible crypto-assets that represent ownership of a unique digital or physical asset, including works of art, real estate, digital collectibles and gaming items and any other valuable,” according to the submitted provision.

As part of the EU’s complex legislative process, informal tripartite discussions, also known as trilogues, can end with provisional agreements on the draft legislation by European institutions. These agreements are first informal, and they subsequently require to be formally approved by each of the three institutions: the Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission.

At the same time, this week, the European Central Bank is expected to