The point being that this law has nothing to do with “sanctioned individuals”.

Spain and Italy: you’re most likely correct.

When US is involved: there are special rules. Every country in Europe has an agreement with US that they’ll write their own law that compels all local banks (not only banks which does business in US) to tell US authorities about any customer that US considers to have some form of connection with US. This case appears to be about the Belgian edition of this set of laws.

Huh, Wikipedia has a blurb about the Belgian process of implementing this law, back in 2014-2015: “the Belgian Ministry of Finance orally confirmed that the IRS agreed to delay the FATCA reporting deadline. Belgian financial institutions now will have until the 10th day following the publication of the Belgian FATCA law into the Belgian official gazette to report their 2014 FATCA information to the Belgian tax authorities. The Belgian FATCA law is expected to be voted on before 2015 year-end.” [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act], the section about ‘Delays in implementation of IGAs’.

There might be different implementations of these laws in different countries, but i can mention at least one country where "know your customer"applies to every single person they deal with, no exceptions.

Not sure why the downvotes.

Without getting into details, this is a bank that has already been in hot water for having closed customers’ accounts because the bank didn’t approve of the customers’ new addresses. Some of those cases didn’t even involve US.

Given all the various “know your customer” rules, I suspect that argument wouldn’t fly.

A subsidiary in US, or a subsidiary in any non-EU country that doesn’t feel bound by this verdict to remove any domestic laws compelling banks to report on their customers.

I don’t know the method by which my bank (which is European, indeed) could be punished by US if they didn’t share the data that IRS and FINCEN wants, true, at least if they don’t have any official activities in the US. I think I recall the was something about US strongarming every other country into effectively making FATCA reporting into local law? (Maybe that’ll change?) What else could US do? Designate officers of the non-cooperative bank as “money laundrers” and make their private lives hell on the international arena?

What I do know is that they (my bank) already is unhappy about the fact that I’m a “US person” and they’ve told me as much in person. They do not allow me to open new accounts. They do not allow me to do any trades beyond moving money between the savings accounts and use their bank card (which I do use when I’m in Europe). They would however allow me to close my accounts! Half their internet banking site is off-limits to me - it’s sometimes difficult to access documents like annual statements because the logical path to that part of the site got roped off!

I’m pretty sure they’re already looking for an excuse to cut me off.

As a European living in the US, this might also mean that my European bank (that I intentionally didn’t leave when I moved, for reasons) will close my account.

I guess my knowledge of cars must have atrophied…

Not so sure about that, given that I’m pretty sure there’s a full sized Mercedes in the back row, and what to me looks like a Volvo in the middle slot, facing the camera.