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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Crypto Asset Rulebook Hits First Anniversary Under Tighter Supervision

Baltasar Haraldsson
Legislative Monitor, Financial Services and Banking

Paris: The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation reaches its first full year of application this June, and the European Securities and Markets Authority is preparing a stocktake that will set the tone for the next phase of supervision. The verdict so far is one of cautious progress, with twenty-eight authorisations issued for crypto-asset service providers across the Union and a further forty-six dossiers in active review.

MiCA, formally Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, applies to issuers of asset-referenced tokens, e-money tokens and other crypto-assets, alongside the firms that trade, custody or advise on them. The regulation distinguishes between tokens that reference a fiat currency, tokens that reference a basket of assets, and a residual category of utility tokens. Stablecoin issuance in particular has been subject to reserve, governance and own-funds requirements that exceeded anything previously imposed on European crypto firms.

The first year has produced three observable effects. First, market concentration has increased. Several mid-sized exchanges have either consolidated or withdrawn from European business, citing the cost of complying with the full prudential and conduct package. Authorisation costs of two to four million euros for a comprehensive crypto-asset service provider licence, with annual compliance spend of similar magnitude, have proved prohibitive for firms below a certain trading volume threshold.

Second, supervisory practice has begun to diverge. National competent authorities in France, Germany and Ireland have taken broadly aligned approaches, while smaller authorities in Malta and Cyprus have faced criticism from the European Banking Authority for what an internal peer review described as inconsistent reserve testing. The Authority will publish supervisory expectations on liquidity stress testing later this year.

Third, the regulation has accelerated the integration of crypto-asset firms with traditional financial market infrastructure. The interaction between MiCA and the Distributed Ledger Pilot Regime has allowed a small cohort of firms to offer tokenised securities settlement within a single supervised environment. Custodians authorised under MiCA have begun applying for related approvals under MiFID II to extend into tokenised funds.

The areas requiring further work are equally clear. Decentralised finance protocols sit largely outside the regulation, and the Commission’s own report on this question is overdue. Non-fungible tokens with collectible characteristics escape MiCA but may fall under consumer protection and anti-money laundering frameworks. The interaction with the forthcoming Payment Services Regulation will require careful drafting to avoid double licensing for e-money token issuers that also offer payment accounts.

A specific test in the months ahead concerns the redemption guarantees attached to e-money tokens. ESMA noted in its February supervisory briefing that several stablecoin issuers had been operating with reserve structures that, while compliant on paper, posed concentrated counterparty risk in the event of stressed redemption. New guidelines on reserve diversification, expected in the autumn, will determine whether the issuer side of the market matures or contracts further.

One year on, MiCA has done what its drafters intended. It has not eliminated crypto-asset activity in the Union, nor has it prevented innovation. It has imposed a price of entry that has produced fewer, larger, more compliant firms. Whether that translates into safer markets and better protected retail consumers is the question the next supervisory cycle will answer.

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