The European Commission opened infringement procedures on September 25, 2026, against 18 member states, France among them, for failing to notify in full the national measures transposing the sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive’s rules on access to beneficial ownership registers, which fell due on July 10, 2026. Each receives a letter of formal notice and has two months to reply; absent a satisfactory response, the Commission may issue a reasoned opinion.
The 18 states named
The press release names Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain. Nine member states are absent. The letters target a notification duty rather than the substance of national law.
What the articles open, and to whom
These articles make up the access regime for the central registers. Article 11 requires member states to give competent authorities “immediate, unfiltered, direct and free access” to the interconnected registers, without alerting the entity concerned. Its paragraph 2 extends that access to seven further categories: self-regulatory bodies, tax authorities, the authorities that enforce EU restrictive measures, AMLA, the bloc’s anti-money laundering authority, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, OLAF, Europol and Eurojust. Paragraph 3 adds obliged entities, which must have timely access when they run customer due diligence under Chapter III of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624. Paragraph 4 lets member states charge for it, capped at the cost of assuring the quality of the register data and making it available. Article 12 covers access by persons who can demonstrate a legitimate interest, Article 13 its mutual recognition, and Article 15 the exceptions. The press release attributes these articles to Directive (EU) 2015/849. Article 78 of the sixth directive sets their deadline at July 10, 2026, with most of the text due on July 10, 2027 and its Article 18 on July 10, 2029.
| Standing | Count | Member states |
|---|---|---|
| Named in 2025 and 2026 | 7 | Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Poland |
| Named in 2025 only | 4 | Denmark, Italy, Slovakia, Sweden |
| Named in 2026 only | 11 | Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain |
| Never named | 5 | Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia |
Payments enter through that paragraph 3. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 counts credit institutions and financial institutions among its obliged entities, and the financial institution category covers payment services, e-money and crypto-asset service providers. They query the registers to identify the beneficial owners of corporate customers. The calendar leaves a gap: the access right has been due since July 10, 2026, while the regulation that creates the due diligence duty it serves does not apply until July 10, 2027. Until then, a payment institution works under national rules derived from Directive (EU) 2015/849.
A second round, one year after the first
A year before these letters, to the day, the Commission put 11 member states on notice over the directive’s first deadline of July 10, 2025, which required comprehensive access to beneficial ownership information on legal entities, trusts and similar arrangements. Seven states appear in both letters. A state’s absence from the second list means it notified measures for the second deadline, not that its position on the first one is settled.
Timeline
The letters are addressed to governments, not to firms, and open no register by themselves. They are the first stage of a procedure that can lead to a reasoned opinion and then to the Court of Justice of the European Union. A nearer deadline faces all 27: Article 11 requires them to tell the Commission, by October 10, 2026, which categories of obliged entities were granted access and what information those entities can see. That filing will show, country by country, what a payment institution can look up.