Austria Financial Market Authority becomes the supervisory and enforcement authority for financial sanctions from 1 January 2026

Austria’s Financial Market Authority (FMA) announced that it will take over from the Oesterreichische Nationalbank responsibility for monitoring compliance with, and enforcing, financial sanctions in the Austrian financial sector from 1 January 2026, completing the final step of a reform passed in 2024. All financial market participants covered by the Sanctions Act, including banks, payment institutions, crypto-asset service providers and insurance undertakings, will fall under the FMA’s competence. Firms are required to establish strategies, controls and procedures to mitigate the risks of sanctions breaches and circumvention, and sanctions notifications must be submitted to the FMA. Financial sanctions supervision will be combined with the FMA’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervision, using the authority’s existing supervisory toolkit including market entry processes, fit and proper assessments, on-site inspections, measures to restore compliance and administrative penalties; the FMA will also run procedures to release frozen assets, currently around EUR 2.5 billion in Austria. For 2026, the FMA plans around 30 combined on-site inspections and around 20 on-site spot checks covering AML/CFT and financial sanctions, with supervised entities having a single point of contact and harmonised supervisory processes across both areas.