A number of experts met on Wednesday 25 November at an online conference organised by Finance Watch to discuss the proposal for a Regulation on markets in crypto-assets (MiCA), presented by the Commission in September (see EUROPE 12567/2).
While they generally welcomed the Commission's ambition to act to put an end to the “Wild West” for crypto-assets, they also felt that several improvements were needed.
Author of an own-initiative report for the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12577/10), the MEP Ondřej Kovařík (Renew Europe, Czech Republic) insisted on the need to categorise crypto-assets. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament also stresses the importance of having a taxonomy that is open and sufficiently detailed, he said. And, according to the MEP, the Commission's proposal seems somewhat lacking in granularity in this respect.
Elie Beyrouthy, President of the European Payment Institutions Federation (EPIF) and Vice President for Government Affairs at American Express, also acknowledged the importance of this initiative, but said that other European legislation should also be reviewed, including the MiFID II Directive, in order to create an appropriate framework.
“Consumers want to have confidence in the system”, he said, citing the example of the Western Union international payment solution, which is known to be more expensive than others, but which continues to be widely used because of its reliability. Mr Beyrouthy hoped that the MiCA proposal would strengthen consumer confidence.
For his part, Wolf-Georg Ringe, Professor of Law and Finance at the University of Hamburg, would have preferred a somewhat less prescriptive and more open to experimentation regulatory approach.
The Libra, the great turning point
All agree that Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project has prompted Member States and the EU to urgently update their legal framework to take account of ‘stablecoins’ and other categories of crypto-assets.
“The MiCA project has the name ‘Libra’ written all over it”, said Wolf-Georg Ringe, noting that the Facebook initiative had been experienced as a threat to European sovereignty (see EUROPE 12558/2) and that the subject of ‘stablecoins’ had become eminently political.
According to Virgile Perret of the Observatoire de la Finance in Geneva, if it were to see the light of day, the Libra could well be a “ turning point” in the history of money. Despite all the promises of financial inclusion, we must not forget that its primary motivation is to compete with banks and strengthen Facebook’s business model, he said.
Participants also agreed that digital central bank currencies could be interesting alternatives.
Jürgen Schaaf, economist and adviser at the European Central Bank (ECB), shared the monetary institute’s thoughts on the possible launch of a digital euro. The ECB is in a “pre-investigation” phase, he explained, and has not yet taken a decision.
For the time being, two options seem possible: a digital euro that would work as a token or one that would be based on an account, Schaaf said. The ECB is also considering how to mitigate risks, for example by setting a threshold for the amount of digital currency that individuals could hold. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)