The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) held a first exchange of views on Wednesday 14 April on the Digital Finance Package, presented in September 2020 by the European Commission.
Throughout its work, the European Parliament tries to strike the right balance between innovation and protection, in particular on the proposed regulation on ‘Markets in Crypto-assets’ or ‘MiCA’.
The rapporteur on this text, Stefan Berger (EPP, Germany), wants to give more powers to the European Central Bank (ECB). In particular, he considers that the decision on the authorisation of electronic money tokens should be left to it (see EUROPE 12693/8). A proposal that was fairly well received by the political groups.
However, according to the S&D group, further improvements are still needed to ensure that the ‘MiCA’ regulation has a “clear scope of application”.
The Greens/EFA and Renew Europe kept to the same tone in calling for a stable and predictable framework with safeguards for consumers and against the risk of money laundering.
For Ondřej Kovařík (Renew Europe, Czech Republic), it will be necessary to look closely at the definitions and classification of crypto-assets.
For its part, the Identity and Democracy group has argued for common regulation at international level. “What is the purpose of regulating crypto-assets if other countries like the United States, the UK, China or Japan legislate differently from us?”, asked Antonio Maria Rinaldi (Identity and Democracy, Italy).
Pilot scheme on distributed ledger technology
With regard to the proposal for a regulation on a pilot scheme for market infrastructures based on Distributed Ledger Technology (or DLT), MEPs seem to be looking for more ambition.
The rapporteur on this dossier, Johan Van Overtveldt (ECR, Belgium), proposed maintaining the aggregate threshold suggested by the Commission, i.e. a maximum of €2.5 billion market value of DLT securities, but suggested a much lower individual threshold of €500 million for shares and bonds (see EUROPE 12677/12).
The EPP and S&D groups were in favour of higher thresholds to include more new entrants to the markets.
For its part, the group Renew Europe would prefer to stay close to the thresholds proposed by the Commission.
French MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, who is negotiating on behalf of the Renew Europe group, said she was in favour of creating a pilot scheme to explore solutions within a “framework very tightly controlled by national and European supervisors” and which is “sufficiently open so as not to limit experimentation while preserving financial stability”.
The pilot scheme must not create a de facto “alternative market that would be difficult to exit after the end of the experiment”, she also warned.
The Left group was more concerned about this proposal, believing that, if it were to be implemented, it should be tightly controlled and have as few exemptions as possible.
Digital Operational Resilience Act
With regard to the Digital Operational Resilience Act (or DORA), the rapporteur Billy Kelleher (Renew Europe, Ireland) believes that one of the major points of debate between the political groups will be the scope of application.
In his draft report, he proposed, inter alia, excluding small and medium-sized insurance and reinsurance undertakings as well as small and medium-sized audit firms and statutory auditors (see EUROPE 12686/29).
Another point which will be fundamental: the structure of the new monitoring framework for critical ICT third-party service providers.
At the meeting, the EPP and S&D groups insisted on the need for a proportional framework. The EPP is particularly concerned that this new supervisory framework, as proposed by the Commission, will hamper innovation in Europe.
The MEPs also intend to pay particular attention to the Directive which introduces targeted changes to European legislation to bring it into line with the ‘DORA’ regulation, for which MEP Mikuláš Peksa (Greens/EFA, Czech Republic) is the rapporteur.
Political groups can table their amendments until 20 May for the ‘Van Overtveldt’ report, until 26 May for the ‘Kelleher’ report and until 31 May for the ‘Berger’ report. However, an extension of the deadlines cannot be ruled out. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)