Press Release
European Union and United States of America pursue dialogue on Terrorism finance issues

Date of release : 22-06-2005

Policy area : General Affairs and External Relations

On 20 June, Georges Friden, Deputy Director, Political Affairs Department, Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs and E. Anthony Wayne, Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, US Department of State, pursued, in Washington, the EU-US dialogue on terrorism finance issues.

This dialogue, established in September 2004 continues to provide a forum for mutual review of current issues as well as a framework for counter-terrorism finance cooperation involving judicial, investigatory, designation, and technical assistance issues.

The dialogue is coordinated through an informal EU-US Troika process chaired by the Department of State and the EU Presidency, and includes participation by the EU Council Secretariat, European Commission, Europol and Eurojust and the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Troika meetings take place during each Presidency to set direction and assess progress. Informal expert-level groupings of judicial, technical assistance, and designation professionals have initiated joint work programs.

Since our December 2004 report, we have organized two joint workshops, on judicial and designation issues respectively, hosted by the Luxembourg Presidency, and conducted a joint technical assistance mission to Tanzania at the invitation of the Department of State. The Presidency also welcomed the participation of United States government representatives in the EU seminar on terrorism finance issues with the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Priorities for the coming months include:

• Completion by the practitioners group (prosecutors and investigators) of a matrix of American and European judicial procedures and of a joint paper on best practices in terrorism finance cases. 
• Establishment of an information-exchange mechanism to support coordination of technical assistance, including future joint missions, to priority countries. 
• Work by the designation group to clarify and compare designation and information criteria and procedures used by the EU and the U.S. 
• Initial exchanges of draft legal and regulatory texts as appropriate to facilitate early review and identify areas of cooperation. 
• Identification of areas of new cooperation based on issues raised in UK Presidency conferences on elements of the EU Counter-Terrorism Action Plan. 
• Initial discussion of options for coordinating scheduling of EU-US dialogue meetings and the EU Presidency calendar.

At the May 10 informal Troika meeting, we reviewed these priorities in addition to issues involved in implementation of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing, outreach to the private sector, cooperation between financial intelligence units, and critical infrastructure protection. We will continue to seek additional opportunities to deepen our cooperation in fulfillment of the 2004 EU-US Declaration on Counter-Terrorism.