Tomorrow, Friday, EU interior and justice ministers will meet in Brussels — for an emergency meeting after the Paris terror attacks.
According to Reuters, EU member states “plan a crackdown on virtual currencies and anonymous payments made online and via pre-paid cards in a bid to tackle terrorism financing”.
“They will urge the European Commission, the EU executive arm, to propose measures to “strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic / anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by pre-paid cards,” draft conclusions of the meeting said.”
In other words, governments would like to take control of all forms of payments except cash. And with EU rules against money laundering access to cash also can be quite restricted.
It would be very interesting to know how the EU is supposed to “strengthen control” of Bitcoin — as the system is totally decentralized. I doubt that they can.
But they can make life more difficult for ordinary people if clamping down on e.g. pre-paid credit cards and online payment systems.
This EU meeting is being held in panic, with politicians desperate to look as if they are doing something of substance to combat terrorism. So, I guess, they really haven’t thought things trough. And they leave all the details to the European Commission to figure out.
This might result not in an EU directive, but an EU regulation. If that will be the case, measures can quickly be implemented without having to involve the people’s elected representatives in the European Parliament.
/ HAX
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