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The transposition period for the directive on special safeguards for children in criminal proceedings (Directive 2016/800) ended on 11 June 2019. Together with the directive guaranteeing access to legal aid (Directive 2016/1919), which had to be transposed by 25 May 2019, it is the last piece of legislation that had to be implemented according to the 2009 Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights.

On 22 July 2019, the Commission presented the “joint review of the implementation of the Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of Financial Messaging Data from the European Union to the United States for the purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.” It is the fifth evaluation report on the agreement which entered into force on 1 August 2010.

At its meeting on 7 June 2019, the home affairs ministers/ministers of the interior of the EU Member States adopted Council conclusions on preventing and combatting radicalisation in prisons and on dealing with terrorist and violent extremist offenders after release. The Council pointed out that effective measures in this area must urgently be taken.

The Council has established a framework that allows the EU to impose restrictive sanctions against external cyber-attacks threatening the Union or its Member States. The framework comes in response to recent malicious cyberattacks that originated or were carried out outside the EU and affected the EU Member States’ critical infrastructure, competitiveness, and/or state functions.

On 7 June 2019, the EU added another piece of cybersecurity legislation: the “Cybersecurity Act” . It introduces a framework for European Cybersecurity Certificates and reinforces the mandate of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

The Commission is not fully satisfied as to how Member States have transposed Directive 2014/62/EU on the protection of the euro and other currencies against counterfeiting by criminal law.

The European Parliament and the Council adopted new legislation that improves the access of law enforcement authorities to financial information.

In parallel with other reports in the area of anti-money laundering, on 24 July 2019, the Commission published a report on the interconnection of national centralised automated mechanisms (central registries or central electronic data retrieval systems) of the Member States on bank accounts (COM(2019) 372 final).

In a series of anti-money laundering reports (all published on 24 July 2019), the Commission assessed the framework for cooperation between Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs).The Commission concludes that cooperation has improved greatly over the past few years. However, several shortcomings remain.

On 24 July 2019, the Commission published a report on recent alleged money laundering cases involving EU credit institutions (COM(2019) 373 final). This report is the Commission’s response to requests from the European Parliament and the Council to carry out a thorough review of whether there are structural flaws in the regulatory and supervisory framework.