Frankfurt beat its rivals through multiple rounds of voting in the Council and Parliament, including a complex ballot system that resembled Eurovision-voting, to secure the prestigious EU agency.
The final decision emerged after Frankfurt secured a simple majority in a joint vote between MEPs and EU ambassadors in Brussels behind closed doors, according to five officials in the room.
It’s the first time that Parliament has been involved in finding a home for an EU agency since EU courts stripped Council of its unilateral role of picking cities in the summer of 2022. Before that, MEPs were kept out of the decisionmaking process, which was seen as too partial.
EU governments still managed to rig the system, however, by rallying around a single candidate city for AMLA a few hours before meeting with MEPs at 6 p.m. The strategy meant that only one MEP needed to side with the Council to secure governments’ top pick.
Frankfurt’s win will leave a sour taste in the mouths of some MEPs who had backed Madrid, Paris or Rome.
The European Commission proposed AMLA in July 2021 after a series of dirty money scandals that exposed a blind spot in bank supervision.