The European Commission is preparing to lower its assessment of the money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk posed by the art and antiquities trade, according to the Financial Times. The new rating would be moderate, down from high in the previous assessment in 2022, a shift the Commission attributes to limited evidence of illicit activity in the sector within the EU. A Commission spokesperson told the paper the assessment has not yet been finalised.

The plan emerged from minutes of a meeting held in Brussels on 29 January 2026 by the Commission's expert sub-group on dialogue with the art market. At that session, the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, known as DG FISMA, presented findings from its forthcoming 2026 Supranational Risk Assessment on money laundering and terrorist financing, due for publication later in 2026. The minutes record that the threat linked to works of art and antiques will be rated moderate, or level two.

A moderate rating does not mean the risk has gone away. The minutes note that mitigation measures still need to be put in place and sector awareness improved, with vulnerabilities including privacy and discretion in transactions, the accessibility of the market and fragmentation across jurisdictions, all of which can facilitate illicit financial flows. The EU's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation has meanwhile widened the net of regulated businesses to cover operators dealing in cultural goods and introduced a 10,000-euro cap on large cash payments to reduce anonymity. The assessment singles out the secondary art market as particularly exposed to criminal exploitation, rating that threat moderate as well.

DG FISMA also put forward recommendations for tightening oversight, including continued dialogue with stakeholders, awareness campaigns, targeted training and new guidance and codes of ethics. The trade's reaction was split. The British Art and Design Association welcomed the reassessment, while the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art argued that even a moderate rating overstates the problem, pointing to figures from the Commission's Financial Intelligence Unit showing only 0.3 percent of art and antiquities items in the EU have been linked to criminal cases.