Cooperation between Financial Intelligence Units in the EU: Challenges for the Rights to Privacy and Data Protection

Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) hold a central position in the chain of actors responsible for the monitoring of money movements in the European Union (EU). In support of their role, which is to receive, analyse, and disseminate suspicious transaction reports, they have been furnished with significant information-gathering and information-sharing powers. At present, FIUs feature prominently in the EU’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing agendas, and plans to further enhance their powers of information exchange are underway. At the same time, however, the legal challenges that arise from their constant empowerment, particularly for the rights to privacy and data protection, are being overlooked. This chapter examines FIUs’ cooperation within the EU from a critical angle and argues that their cooperation takes place under an increasingly fragmented and complex legal framework, which raises significant challenges for rights to privacy and data protection. To illustrate this point, the chapter concludes by highlighting a series of problematic FIU practices.