Controls of cash entering or leaving the European Union

Briefing 21-06-2017

The anonymity of cash transactions and the illegal nature of the problems identified in the IA bring about considerable challenges for the analysis, including a limited evidence base and trade-offs between the options to tackle the problems and their impact on several Union principles. The mostly qualitative analysis is generally logical and coherent, leading to a pertinent set of preferred options. For various reasons, however, it provides, very little quantification of costs and none of benefits, and focuses mainly on administrative burdens for competent authorities. To partly compensate for the lack of reliable data, despite apparent time constraints for the preparation of the evaluation and the IA – both conducted internally – the IA consistently indicates stakeholder views, which appear to support most of the preferred options of the IA, although they cannot be considered representative due to the small number of respondents.