The European Union and Council of Europe signed the Service Contract for the Assessment of the concrete implementation and effective application of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive in the EU Member States on 24 July 2019. The contract builds upon the Council of Europe expertise in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing monitoring and cooperation to provide a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of implementation of select measures of Directive (EU) 2015/849. The assessment process will rely on a dedicated platform developed by the Council of Europe as a basis for the close ongoing cooperation with the EU Member States for the assessments. The successful implementation of the process will be of major importance for ensuring a coherent application of the measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in the EU context in order to effectively address the supranational nature of ML/TF risks. The assessment process will be instrumental in the fulfillment of the European Commission tasks as a guardian of the Union treaties based on an accurate overview provided for each Member State and on a reflection of horizontal issues of application within the EU. The process includes an inception phase that would ensure the adjustment of the assessment methodology. The assessments of all EU Member States and the horizontal analysis are expected to be completed in 24 months (July 2021).