As AMLA Tests Its Supervisory Model Through 2026, a New Commentary Maps the EU's Single AML Rulebook
On 18 December 2025, the new European Anti-Money Laundering Authority published draft regulatory technical standards setting out a common methodology for assessing money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk across the EU. AMLA Chair Bruna Szego called the standards "a significant step toward supervisory convergence." Throughout 2026, AMLA is testing that methodology and its selection process together with national supervisors, ahead of direct supervision — expected from 2028 — of around 40 high-risk financial institutions and groups, while every other obliged entity remains under national authority.
That build-out is the practical face of a much larger 2024 legislative package: a directly applicable Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) and a Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD6), designed together as a "single rulebook" for the whole EU. Georgios Pavlidis's new commentary, The EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive and Regulation (ISBN 9781035347094), is the first article-by-article guide to that rulebook — 934 pages working through the AMLR's customer due diligence and beneficial ownership provisions and the AMLD6's directive-level requirements, and mapping exactly where AMLA's future supervision ends and national authority continues.
For compliance teams at cross-border banks and financial groups, the book answers the question AMLA's own 2026 testing phase is still working out in practice: which entities are likely to fall inside AMLA's 40-institution perimeter, and which obligations under the directly applicable AMLR apply regardless of where supervision sits. For law firms advising on M&A or market entry in the EU financial sector, the commentary's provision-by-provision treatment of beneficial ownership and customer due diligence gives a single reference point instead of cross-checking the Regulation and Directive separately. For researchers and policy analysts, Pavlidis's framing — that a single rulebook is not automatically a single system — is a lens directly relevant to evaluating AMLA's 2026-2027 convergence work as it unfolds.
For academic and institutional law libraries serving banking, financial regulation, or EU criminal law collections, this is the current standard reference on the EU's AML overhaul, written by a scholar holding a UNESCO Chair and a Jean Monnet Chair in the field.
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Q&A
Q: What is the EU's new AML "single rulebook"?
A: The 2024 package combining a directly applicable Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) and a Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD6), the subject of this article-by-article commentary.
Q: What is AMLA and when does it start direct supervision?
A: AMLA is the EU's first anti-money laundering supervisor. It is testing its risk-assessment and selection methodology with national supervisors through 2026, ahead of direct supervision of around 40 high-risk institutions expected from 2028.
Q: Who needs this commentary?
A: Compliance officers, financial regulators, and legal practitioners at EU and international law firms and financial institutions, plus academic researchers in EU financial and criminal law.
Q: Who is the author?
A: Georgios Pavlidis, who holds a UNESCO Chair and a Jean Monnet Chair and directs the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence AI-2-TRACE-CRIME at Neapolis University Pafos, Cyprus.
Q: Where can I buy this book?
A: Through CLNZ Books, with worldwide delivery for university libraries, law firms, and individual professionals.
Q: What is the ISBN for this title?
A: ISBN 9781035347094.