Ministry of Justice brings clarifications related to fine Romania received from CJEU

The Ministry of Justice on Friday brought a series of clarifications related to the 3-million euro worth fine Romania got from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for the delayed and incomplete implementation of the Directive (EU) 2015/849 on preventing the use of the financial system for money laundering or terrorist financing.

According to the Ministry, the Directive was supposed to be transposed into the national legislation of Romania by June 26 2017.

On 31.05.2018, the draft law on the prevention and combat of money laundering and financing terrorism, as well as on the modification and supplementing of some normative acts were approved by the Government and submitted to Parliament for debate under an emergency procedure.

The draft laws were adopted by the Senate with modifications on 24.09.2018 and by the Deputies Chamber on 24.10.2018, and after reexamination was adopted by the Senate on 18.03.2019 and the Deputies Chamber on 26.06.2019.

The law was promulgated by the Romanian President as law no. 129/2019.

The Court of Justice of the European Union on Thursday informed that Romania and Ireland have been fined with 3 million and 2 million euros respectively for delaying and incompletely applying Directive (EU) 2015/849 on preventing the use of the financial system for money laundering or terrorist financing.

Now Romania is forced to pay a lump sum of 3 million euros while Ireland has to pay 2 million euros.

Directive 2015/8491 aims to prevent the use of the EU's financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing. Member States had to transpose that directive into their national law by 26 June 2017 and notify the European Commission of the measures adopted in that regard.

On 27 August 2018, the Commission brought two actions before the Court for failure to fulfil obligations, submitting that Romania, on the one hand, and Ireland, on the other, had, within the period set for them in the respective reasoned opinions, neither transposed Directive 2015/849 in full nor notified the corresponding national transposition measures.

By two Grand Chamber judgments delivered today, the Court upheld the actions brought by the Commission. It therefore held, in the first place, that, on the expiry of the period set them in the reasoned opinion, Romania and Ireland had neither adopted the national measures transposing Directive 2015/849 nor notified such measures to the Commission and that, consequently, they failed to fulfill their obligations under that directive.

The Court ruled that Romania and Ireland failed to comply with their obligations for two years.