How can customers’ proper to entry fee accounts with fundamental options be reconciled with banks’ anti-money laundering duties? AG de la Tour in Case C-81/24 – Cyber Tech

The CJEU was lately requested to interpret Directive 2014/92/EU on entry to fee accouts with fundamental options (PAD), which is to the most effective of my data the primary or a minimum of one of many few preliminary rulings decoding PAD. The query is how can the best to entry fee accounts with fundamental options or fundamental financial institution accounts be reconciled with the financial institution’s obligation to adjust to anti-money laundering guidelines. This basically requires weighing two essential coverage targets, the monetary inclusion of customers, who don’t have any different fee account, which is a cornerstone of monetary inclusion,  and the intention to forestall using the the EU monetary system for the needs of cash laundering and terrorist financing.

The query referred to the CJEU by the Slovenian Okrajno sodišče v Mariboru asks whether or not Article 16(4) of Directive 2014/92, learn within the gentle of Directive 2015/849 or the Fourth Anti-Cash Launderng Directive (4AMLD), could also be interpreted as authorising Member States to require banks to reject a shopper’s utility to open a fee account with fundamental options on the bottom that she or he is included in an inventory of the Workplace of International Belongings Management (OFAC) of the USA Division of the Treasury. 

Article 16(1) of PAD offers a proper for customers to entry fundamental fee accounts and confers an obligation on Member States to make sure that all credit score establishments or a minimum of a adequate variety of them assure the availability of fundamental financial institution accounts. This proper belongs to all customers legally resident within the Member State, together with asylum seekers or these with no mounted tackle (Article 16(2)). Nonetheless, Article 16(4) offers an exception to the best. Banks can refuse the buyer’s request to open the fundamental checking account the place the opening of such an account would infringe the financial institution’s duties to forestall cash laundering and terrorism financing. The PAD due to this fact provides main to nationwide securty and monetary stability issues over monetary inclusion of people. Nonetheless, the query is to what diploma. The issue right here was whether or not the mere truth of being included on an OFAC checklist, with out having been convicted of any offence for which he’s on that checklist, or having been topic to any restrictive measure from the United Nations, the European Union or a Member State is adequate to represent a breach of the provisions regarding the prevention of cash laundering and terrorist financing which can due to this fact justify a refusal to open a fee account with fundamental options. Even when inclusion on such an inventory constitutes a particular circumstance justifying elevated vigilance, it was not clear whether or not it could possibly justify a refusal to open a fee account with fundamental options.

As Advocate Common Richard de la Tour notes in his Opinion delivered 4 Sepember 2025, the issue is that each directives are minimal harmonisation, permitting Member States to undertake extra stringent measures. However, the 4AMLD in Article 8 at minimal requires that Member States guarantee banks have in place insurance policies, controls and procedures to mitigate and handle successfully the dangers of cash laundering and terrorist financing recognized on the degree of the Union, the Member State and the financial institution. These ought to embrace buyer due diligence set out in Article 10, which incorporates figuring out the shopper and verifying the shopper’s identification on the premise of paperwork, information or info obtained from a dependable and impartial supply, assessing the aim and supposed nature of the enterprise relationship and conducting ongoing monitoring of the enterprise relationship. Because the AG rightly notes in his evaluation, whereas the actual fact of being included in OFAC could also be a crimson flag warranting a extra thorough due diligence, it shouldn’t be adequate to outright refuse the open a fundamental checking account.

The AG due to this fact is of the opinion, that Article 16(4) of Directive have to be interpreted as that means {that a} banking establishment might not refuse to open a fee account with fundamental options solely on the bottom that the title of the buyer making use of to open such an account is on the OFAC, until, the relevant nationwide regulation expressly offers for such a extra stingent method, given the minimal nature of the directives.