In her article published on Monday in the newspaper La Estrella de Panama, the diplomat assured that since July 2019 the European Union (EU) has not made any technical assessment of Panama, so this decision is limited to copy what other international organizations establish.

She said that the EU’s methodology establishes that if a country is on the list of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), it should automatically be included on the EU’s list as part of a kind of domino effect.

In this regard, she called attention to the time lag between one list and another, which brings with it that ‘although Panama may not have technically complied in the period 2017-2018 that was evaluated by FATF-OECD, for this first half of 2020 the technical reality is different, which is not being considered since we are not technically evaluated.’

Therefore, the country’s response and strategy should revolve around three pillars: expressing its disagreement with the lack of technical evaluation, mitigating the negative impact and rescuing Panama’s image, she said.