European Union finance ministers on Tuesday adopted a plan to enhance the bloc's defences against money laundering at banks, but the move could slow a legislative reform on banking supervision.

The action plan is meant to be the EU response to high-profile cases of alleged money laundering at banks in several EU states, including Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and Cyprus.

Ministers agreed there was a "need to strengthen the effectiveness of the current framework" to counter money laundering, and proposed some non-legislative actions to implement in coming months.

But the plan did not include any recommendation for legislative changes and did not take address calls from the European Central Bank to set up an EU-wide agency to counter money laundering.

The plan could also delay a reform of money-laundering supervision at banks proposed by the European Commission in September, because ministers first want to assess the recent cases of financial crime at the bloc's lenders, the document said confirming a Reuters report last week.

Malta found itself in the EU’s crosshairs following a European Banking Authority (EBA) report criticising the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit’s (FIAU) supervision of Pilatus Bank in 2016.

During a June visit to Malta, European Commissioner Věra Jourová expressed fears that there were gaps in Malta’s anti-money laundering laws.

In its report, the EBA took the FIAU to task over its failure to sanction Pilatus after preliminary findings by the unit raised concerns about the bank’s lack of compliance with anti-money laundering laws. The FIAU has in turn accused the EBA of drawing broad conclusions based on a single case.