The Direction générale du Trésor, the Autorité des marchés financiers, the Banque de France and the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution have jointly submitted a 73-page response, written in English, to the European Commission’s consultation on the review of the MiCA crypto-asset regulation. The document was published on Wednesday 21 October, following a press release dated 8 October.
In answering question 4 of the consultation, the French authorities said the most serious concerns relate to enforcement rather than to the drafting of obligations. Third-country offers targeting EU investors, often relayed by influencers, fall outside the white paper regime and the liability of Article 15. They argued the answer lies in detection tools, such as automated online data collection, and in regulating influencers, not in easing obligations.
Forum shopping warning
The submission also flagged a problem within the EU itself. National notification of European offers produces different qualifications and controls, which it said opens the door to forum shopping between member states. That, the French authorities argued, justifies centralising supervision at the level of ESMA.
France wants ESMA’s threshold for significant crypto-asset service providers lowered from its current level of 15 million daily active users. France already has its own framework for influencer promotion, set out in a law dated 9 June 2023, which bans the promotion of unregistered or unauthorised crypto actors.
Stablecoins and unlicensed exchanges
The contribution includes proposals to ban licensed providers from serving tokens that are not MiCA-compliant, naming Tether’s USDT, while encouraging euro-denominated stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits. It also calls for a study on removing the so-called ART category and for rules covering multi-issuance of tokens.
The AMF has separately promised to blacklist and pursue unlicensed exchanges targeting French residents, after the transitional period for PSAN registration ended on 30 June. No changes to MiCA have yet been proposed by the Commission, which is required to report on the review in 2027. Any resulting changes would then need to pass through the European Parliament and the Council.
Related: France moves to tax crypto conversions into stablecoins at 31.4%
