Not One Register
Eighteen of twenty-seven Member States had not declared full transposition of the European Union's register-access articles by their legal deadline. That is a fact about paperwork. It is also the reason a committee should never be promised a beneficial owner before anyone has checked which register is being asked.
Avihu Marom · · 6 MIN READ
What the Commission did, and what it did not do
On 25 September 2026 the European Commission opened infringement procedures against eighteen Member States by sending each a letter of formal notice. The subject was their failure to fully notify the national measures transposing certain provisions of the sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, Directive (EU) 2024/1640.
Eighteen states were named: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Finland.
Provisions in question are the ones that matter to anyone who buys due diligence. In the Commission's own words, they "would allow the Member State ... to provide access to beneficial ownership registers for competent authorities, self-regulatory bodies, obliged entities and for persons with a legitimate interest".
Each state now has two months to complete transposition and notify its measures. That runs to 25 November 2026. If the answer is unsatisfactory, the Commission may issue a reasoned opinion.
Worth stating plainly what this is not. Failing to notify transposition measures is failing to notify. The release says nothing about whether any particular register answers any particular request today, and nobody should write that it does. What the record now holds is the Commission's own count of how many national positions are unfinished, on the articles that govern access.
Scale is worth keeping too. This was one section of a routine monthly infringement package. The same package sent letters of formal notice to twenty-six Member States over a gas directive and to three states over cobalt in toys. Nobody announced anything. A compliance function reading only the announcements would not know it happened.
Eighteen is not eleven grown
Anyone who followed this in 2025 has seen a different number. On 25 September 2025, one year to the day earlier, the Commission sent letters of formal notice to eleven Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden.
Those are two different actions against two different deadlines. The 2025 action concerned the first transposition deadline, 10 July 2025. The 2026 action concerns the deadline for Articles 11, 12, 13 and 15, which is 10 July 2026.
Seven states appear on both lists. Four appear only on the 2025 list. Eleven appear only on the 2026 list. Nothing grew from eleven to eighteen, and a piece that said so would be wrong in a way that is easy to check.
The deadline is in the directive, not in the press release
Article 78(1) of Directive (EU) 2024/1640 sets the general transposition date at 10 July 2027, then carves out four dates by derogation: Article 74 by 10 July 2025, Articles 11, 12, 13 and 15 by 10 July 2026, and Article 18 by 10 July 2029.
Four articles the Commission named are the four in that derogation. Article 11 governs access by competent authorities, self-regulatory bodies and obliged entities. Article 12 governs access by persons with a legitimate interest. Article 13 is the procedure for verifying and mutually recognising a legitimate interest. Article 15 is the exceptions.
Reading the instrument rather than the release matters here for one specific reason. The release's own summary sentence cites Directive (EU) 2015/849, which is the earlier regime, and the articles and the date it gives belong to 2024/1640. The dates above come from the statute book. Nothing in this piece rests on that sentence.
What a request actually returns
Access under Article 12 is not access to a file. It is a defined field set, and the definition is in the article.
Article 12(1) returns the beneficial owner's name, the month and year of birth, the country of residence and the nationality or nationalities, and the nature and extent of the beneficial interest. Three of the enumerated categories also receive historical ownership, including entities dissolved or ceased to exist in the preceding five years, and a description of the control or ownership structure.
Note what is not there. No day of birth. No address. No identification number. A committee that hears "we will identify the beneficial owner" and pictures a file is picturing something the article does not describe.
Access is granted by electronic means, and the article specifies that it is given without alerting the legal entity or legal arrangement concerned.
That last point is not a universal feature of gated access, and it is worth knowing before anyone assumes it. The Government of the Virgin Islands published its own legitimate-interest policy on 23 June 2025, and in its own words registered companies "receive notification of any query and there follows a process for managing objections and appeals before any data is released", while beneficial owners "can apply for exemptions". It is now operating. The BVI Financial Services Commission's Industry Circular 11 of 2026 records the launch of legitimate-interest requests on 1 April 2026, and that on receipt of a request the entity's registered agent has five days to file a notice of objection and a further five days to file an application opposing disclosure.
Who is allowed to ask
Article 12(2) enumerates who is deemed to have a legitimate interest. Two of the categories are the ones a buyer will recognise.
Point (c) covers natural or legal persons "likely to enter into a transaction with a legal entity or legal arrangement and who wish to prevent any link between such a transaction and money laundering, its predicate offences or terrorist financing". Point (d) covers entities subject to AML and CFT requirements in third countries, on a demonstrated need under those requirements.
There is also a residual route. Member States must ensure that other persons able to demonstrate a legitimate interest are granted access on a case-by-case basis.
Every one of those routes is a national procedure under Article 13, in a state whose transposition of Article 13 may be among the eighteen the Commission wrote to on 25 September 2026. Which is the point of this piece. The right is European. The counter is national.
What to do with this before promising anything
Third jurisdiction belongs in the same sentence, because the direction is consistent. The United States ended domestic beneficial ownership reporting on 14 August 2026, the date the final rule took effect, at 91 FR 52508. Deletion of the data already collected went with it.
So the practical position for anyone signing a file in 2026 is this. Ownership transparency is not one thing that is getting better or worse. It is a set of national counters, each with its own gate, its own field set, its own notification behaviour and its own state of readiness, and the Commission has just published a count of how many of those counters are unfinished on the articles that open them.
Which changes what is worth promising. Naming the beneficial owner is not a deliverable that can be committed to before the jurisdiction is known. Telling somebody what is findable on their subject, before they promise it to a committee, is.
That is what a coverage ledger is for. It states what was searched, in which registers, in which languages, on what date, and what came back empty and why. A clean result can mean four different things and three of them are not clean. A report that does not say which one it was has not answered the question it was bought to answer.
Read a complete Counterparty Screen before buying one, including the section that lists what could not be verified.