I’ve recently seen a lot of youtube videos about the future interdiction for EU citizens to open an account outside of the EU starting from 1st of january 2027.
First, I thought it was a fake news.
So, I’ve checked the regulation from which this new rule is supposed to be extracted.
It’s the CRDVI directive (Directive 2024/1619), and more precisely the modification of the article 21 c of the 575/2013 regulation.
Actually, even if we can’t talk about a complete interdiction to open an account abroad, outside of the EU, for a person or a company, the process will be more complex and you’ll have to take care of how you make the first contact with the foreign bank.
Indeed, to avoid future complications, if you want to open an account abroad, you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve initiated the process of obtaining information and opening an account abroad, and that it’s not the bank that has contacted you first, directly or indirectly, through a local intermediary.
So, you’ll need to document all the steps of the process, mainly during the beginning of the relationship, by, for example, saving Emails, and proving by airplane tickets or hotel reservations that you travelled in the foreign country to open the account (I’ve asked more information about that to the AI, and I’ll post later on that), even if in the case of questions from banking authorities in Europe concerning the process, it’ll be up to the foreign bank to demonstrate that you’ve initiated the process on your own, and that you have not be contacted by the bank in the first place.
We can think that this formalism could be frightening for foreign banks, and that they’ll hesitate to open an account to EU citizens from now on, because the regulation is backdated from 11/26/26.
This new regulation doesn’t apply to EU citizen with foreign residency, only to EU citizens or non-citizens having their permanent residency in the EU (even American citizens).
But these restrictions don’t apply to relations between banks.
It’s really individuals and companies that are the main target of this new regulation.
Conclusion : No, the opening of bank accounts abroad, outside of the EU, won’t be forbidden, and by the way it’s not authorized by the rules of OMC, but you’ll need to be attentive to the process, and principally through being at the initiative of the process, to document every steps of it. But we can suppose that foreign banks will be reluctant to open accounts to EU citizens, because even if there is no strict interdiction, and so there’ll be less options to open an account abroad, like for example with American citizens and Fatca.
