Published 6 October 2026

AMLA won't be your supervisor. It is still shaping your rules.

The EU's anti-money laundering authority will directly supervise no more than forty financial institutions or groups in its first round. Notaries, accountants, lawyers and estate agents will feel it another way: through the standards it drafts and the scrutiny it applies to their national supervisors.

This guide covers European Union law. What each Member State sets for itself (the authority that supervises you, the financial intelligence unit that receives your reports, how you file them) is set out country by country: Ireland, Malta and every other Member State.

AMLA stands for the Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism. It is a Union body with legal personality, created by Regulation (EU) 2024/1620 of 31 May 2024 to fight money laundering and terrorist financing across the internal market (Articles 1 and 3). Its seat is in Frankfurt am Main (Article 4).

One authority, three jobs

Article 5 lists AMLA's tasks. Beyond monitoring money laundering risks across the internal market, three jobs shape everything else. It supervises a short list of financial institutions itself. It coordinates and reviews national supervisors, in the financial and the non-financial sectors alike. And it supports and coordinates the Member States' financial intelligence units (FIUs).

Only the first job makes AMLA the supervisor of obliged entities. The other two place it above the national authorities, or alongside them: at most, its staff may join some of their inspections, with their agreement (more on that below). If you run a notarial office, an accountancy practice or an estate agency, it is the other two that matter.

Direct supervision is for banks and financial groups

The Regulation leaves no room for doubt here. A "selected obliged entity", the only kind AMLA supervises itself, is a credit institution, a financial institution or a group of them (Article 2). AMLA assesses those operating in at least six Member States, home country included, and selects the ones whose residual risk profile is rated high (Articles 12 and 13).

The number to remember is forty. If more than forty entities qualify in the first selection, AMLA takes the forty active in the largest number of Member States (Article 106). That selection must start by 1 July 2027 and be completed within six months, and direct supervision begins six months after the list is published (Article 13(4)). The recitals place the start in 2028 (recital 86).

A notary, a lawyer, an accountant, an estate agent or an art dealer cannot end up on that list, however large the firm. One caveat, for completeness. Where a non-financial obliged entity operates in several Member States and its supervisors work together in a college, AMLA staff may join the college's joint activities, on-site inspections included, if those supervisors agree. That does not extend to inspections of auditors, external accountants, tax advisers, notaries, lawyers and other independent legal professionals (Article 36(3)). Even then, it is your national supervisors who carry out the inspection.

Your supervisor stays national, and AMLA keeps an eye on it

Directive (EU) 2024/1640 requires every Member State to appoint one or more supervisors to check that obliged entities comply with the AMLR (Article 37 of the Directive). For the legal and accountancy professions, a Member State may hand that role to a self-regulatory body (Article 37(3)). Which body supervises you depends on your country and your profession; our Europe page sets it out State by State.

AMLA sits one level up. Towards non-financial supervisors, Article 5(4) gives it these tasks:

• keeping the list of non-financial supervisors in the Union;
• running peer reviews of their practices, with the conclusions published on its website (Article 35);
• checking that they have the resources and powers they need;
• investigating a supervisor suspected of not applying Union law, issuing a recommendation, then a warning if the breach is not resolved within a month (Article 37);
• facilitating supervisory colleges and mediating cross-border disagreements between supervisors (Articles 36 and 38).

Where supervision is delegated to a self-regulatory body, AMLA performs those tasks towards the public authority that oversees it (Article 5(4)). None of this lands on your desk overnight. The aim, though, is written into the text: convergence of supervisory practices and higher supervisory standards (Article 5(4)(e)).

The standards it drafts, and four that will shape your files

AMLA does not legislate. It drafts technical standards, regulatory or implementing, as a rule puts them out to open public consultation, and sends them to the Commission, which adopts, amends or rejects them (Articles 49 and 53 of Regulation 2024/1620). It also issues guidelines, which supervisors, FIUs and obliged entities "shall make every effort to comply with" (Article 54).

The AMLR gives AMLA many mandates of this kind. Four bear directly on the day-to-day work of a regulated firm:

These are delivery deadlines, not dates of application. A draft technical standard binds no one until the Commission has adopted it and it has appeared in the Official Journal. Before you rewrite a procedure, check the text that was actually published, and its date.

Suspicious activity reports do not go to Frankfurt

AMLA is not an FIU and does not receive your reports. Under the AMLR, they go to the FIU of the Member State where the obliged entity is established (Article 69(6)). A Member State may also let the legal and accountancy professions report through a self-regulatory body, which forwards the information to the FIU promptly and unfiltered (Article 70(1)).

AMLA's part lies elsewhere: coordinating and supporting the FIUs, setting up joint analyses of cross-border cases with them, and hosting FIU.net, the network they use to exchange information (Article 5(5) and Articles 39 to 47 of Regulation 2024/1620). Your FIU, and how to file with it, are listed on our Europe page.

The timeline at a glance

What you can do now

• Find your supervisor and your FIU on our Europe page.
• Reread your business-wide risk assessment against Article 10 of the AMLR, and look out for the AMLA guidelines that will set its minimum content.
• Follow AMLA's public consultations: as a rule, every draft technical standard goes through one before it reaches the Commission (Articles 49 and 53), and they are open to all.
• Date every rule in your procedures: the one that applies today, and the one that will apply from 10 July 2027 under the AMLR.

Vigilae is AML compliance software: it prepares the due-diligence file, you decide, and you remain solely responsible for your reports. See how it works.

Informative article, current as of 6 October 2026, not constituting legal advice. The articles cited were checked against the texts published in the Official Journal of the European Union; anything governed by national law should be checked with your supervisor.

Frequently asked questions