Will an EU-wide asset registry be implemented soon?

Brussels is preparing for the next blow against privacy. There is now broad agreement in various EU committees that such an asset register must be introduced. A Commission spokeswoman recently stated that it would be ready “very soon”.

In 2021, the Commission commissioned a study to examine whether and how the introduction of an asset register would be possible. The focus is on how member states already record the assets of their citizens – and how the national files can be combined into a central register if necessary.

On the basis of the study, which is reportedly about to be published, the Commission will then decide on its next steps.

In the case of Germany, there is currently no central asset register in which all private possessions are recorded. However, property owners, for example, must be registered in the respective municipal land registers, and income from capital and real estate must be declared in the income tax return. The financial institutions, in turn, know about citizens’ accounts and deposits – and the data on these can be requested from the tax authorities at any time.

As usual, the proponents of a central asset register argue that it is to “combat money laundering”. But even in the ranks of the established parties there are voices contradicting this argument. For example, the German CSU MEP Markus Ferber called the planned register a “wrong path that we should not even take“. He fears a further development of the “financially transparent citizen”.

The administrative effort would also be immense. Some 27 national reporting offices would have to be set up, which would then have to report their data to the EU – a gigantic bureaucratic bureaucracy with their own departments, IT systems and a huge number of employees.

However, any argument against enlarging the already gigantic EU bureaucracy has never impressed the Eurocrats.