MONEY LAUNDERING:TERRORIST FINANCING DIRECTIVE BACKED BY EP CIVIL LIBERTIES COMMITTEE.

Rather than adopting dozens of amendments that stood little chance of being agreed by Council, the EP Committee decided to take a more consensual approach. The various political groups hammered out compromise amendments on the major sticking points so that the final report was adopted in the Committee by 47 votes to zero with one abstention.

However, a European Commission official made clear to the Committee it was not happy with all the amendments that did pass. A Luxembourg EU Presidency official told the MEPs that while Council had made progress on the proposal, there was still a long way to go.

On the lawyer-client confidentiality issue, MEP Hartmut Nassauer (EPP-ED, Germany) who is drafting a report on the issue - said he had withdrawn his amendments as there was insufficient support for them. One amendment insisted lawyers did not have to report money-laundering suspicions about their clients if they were advising them or representing them in legal proceedings. A Commission official said that a precise formula on this issue had been hammered out in talks on the second Directive in 2001 and this delicate balance should not be tampered with. Under the...