You seem to be the one who understands the legislation best, d5000.
This EU AML directive reform will come into force in 2027.
Hopefully it will take a little longer. It would not be the first time that a moratorium is put in place because of how slow and inefficient the administration is, or even that legislation enters into force but in practice takes longer to implement.
I think here you confused two numbers. The 10.000 € are a hard limit for (single) cash payments, and from 3.000 € on KYC has to be conducted on them. In addition, there is some due diligence which has to be done by obliged subjects if they detect a non-cash transaction of 10.000 € or more (or several linked transactions, i.e. if somebody sends two times 9999 euros the same day or one day later to the same bank account).
Well, for nuance that is the upper limit for the whole EU. In Greece the cash limit payment is 500 euros (lol), in France and Spain it is 1,000, while in Belgium and Portugal it is 3,000.
With this, I am not so much concerned about the immediate future but where we are headed.