Federal government sees TFR draft from EU Parliament “critically”

Negotiations are currently taking place in the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) instead of. With this, the European Union wants to introduce comprehensive guidelines for combating money laundering and terrorist financing for the crypto space. However, talks between the Commission, Parliament and member states are faltering because of disagreement between the co-legislators on some points – BTC-ECHO reported.

Now the federal government is also getting involved in the discourse and is contradicting the comprehensive reporting obligations of the EU Parliament. This comes from a response to a written request from the FDP spokesman for blockchain and fintech innovation, Frank Schäffler, to the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) indicates that BTC-ECHO is available.

The House of Representatives of the Confederation of States is calling on crypto service providers, among other things, to report transactions from or to “unhosted wallets” of 1,000 euros or more to the responsible authorities. Insiders previously reported to BTC-ECHO that the threshold had been removed entirely, meaning that every transaction would have to be reported.

To do this, so-called CASPs (Crypto Assets Service Providers) would also have to verify the identity of the transaction partners. Experts criticize a circumstance that would result in a strong concentration of sensitive customer data.

Federal government sees draft “critical”

Apparently the federal government sees it the same way. Florian Toncar, parliamentary state secretary of the BMF, responded to Schäffler’s question:

The demands of the European Parliament that you mentioned are met by the
Critical of the federal government and has accordingly within the framework of the
negotiations positioned.

It is a “regulatory hurdle” that could trigger “an evasive movement towards comprehensive anonymity”, Toncar continued. Parliament’s demands are “difficult to reconcile” with the Council’s position.

In the course of the trilogue negotiations, the federal government wants to do much more to ensure that crypto service providers can use blockchain analysis tools to assess the risk of the respective transfer and to take risk-adequate measures.

The project is also supported by the crypto industry, the letter said. There is also encouragement from the ranks of the FDP. Frank Schäffler writes in a statement:

I am pleased that the federal government is taking a stand against the nonsense of the original transfer-of-funds draft regulation. Now I hope that the federal government will prevail in the council and ultimately also in the trialogue in order not to let Europe become crypto Wallachia and to continue to enable new DeFi projects.