Barbados has been removed from the European Union’s (EU) controversial blacklist. The European Commission announced the decision yesterday and global business sector representatives here hope it will ultimately lead to “some further easing in the enhanced due diligence by international financial institutions, which continue to cause inordinate delays in the execution of some critical transactions”. The EU’s move to delist Barbados from the group of countries that it deems to pose a risk to Europe’s financial system comes more than a year after it was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) money laundering-related greylist. “The European Commission has updated its list of high-risk jurisdictions presenting strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT (anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism) regimes. EU entities covered by the AML framework are required to apply enhanced vigilance in transactions involving these countries. This is important to protect the EU financial system,” the EU Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union announced. “A number of third country jurisdictions were added to the list – Algeria, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Monaco, Namibia, Nepal and Venezuela, while other jurisdictions were delisted – Barbados, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Panama, The Philippines, Senegal, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates.”