Recital 16

Crowdfunding platforms’ vulnerabilities to money laundering and terrorist financing risks are horizontal and affect the internal market as a whole. To date, diverging approaches have emerged across Member States as to the management of those risks. While Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 of the European Parliament and of the Council harmonises the regulatory approach for business investment and lending-based crowdfunding platforms across the Union and introduces several safeguards to deal with potential money laundering and terrorist financing risks, such as due diligence of crowdfunding platforms in respect of project owners and within authorisation procedures, the lack of a harmonised legal framework with robust AML/CFT obligations for crowdfunding platforms creates gaps and weakens the Union’s AML/CFT safeguards. It is therefore necessary to ensure that all crowdfunding platforms, including those already licensed under Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, are subject to Union AML/CFT legislation.