French MiCA Review Proposals: Where They Split From EBA and ESMA

On 21 October 2026 the AMF published the joint answer of four French authorities, the French Treasury, the AMF, the Banque de France and the ACPR, to the European Commission’s targeted consultation on the review of MiCA, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. The French MiCA review proposals run to 73 pages, in English only, and cover Title II offers, the stablecoin regimes in Titles III and IV, the CASP framework in Title V and policy areas MiCA does not yet reach.

The paper is input to the Commission’s review and leaves today’s filings, notifications and capital calculations as they stand. Article 140 of MiCA requires the Commission to report by 30 June 2027, accompanied where appropriate by a legislative proposal. For CASPs and token issuers, the paper shows where the French authorities want MiCA reopened, and how far that departs from the EBA’s 24 September 2026 response and ESMA’s 30 September 2026 paper.

Related reading: MiCA Review: The EBA’s Priorities for Token Issuers and CASPs

French MiCA review proposals: status and dates

The document answers the Commission’s questionnaire question by question, with five-point ratings and free text. A rating is an opinion. The paper scores the requirement for EMT-issuing electronic money institutions (EMIs) to hold “30-60%” of their reserve assets in bank deposits as “not at all appropriate” (Question 26).

The figures come from different provisions. Article 54(a) of MiCA requires at least 30% of the funds received for EMTs and safeguarded under the E-Money Directive to be deposited in separate accounts in credit institutions. Article 45(7)(b) mandates technical standards for significant asset-referenced tokens with a minimum deposit amount of not less than 60%, and Article 58(1)(a) applies Article 45(1) to (4) to EMIs issuing significant EMTs.

The EBA’s June 2024 final report on the draft Article 36(4) RTS reads these provisions together to mean that an EMI issuing significant EMTs holds at least 60% in deposits with credit institutions, against 30% for non-significant EMTs under Article 54 (a competent authority can apply the significant-token requirements to a non-significant issuer under Article 58(2)); that RTS is a draft, so the Level 1 text remains the operative source. The French response changes neither requirement. The same holds for every other rule the paper would change.

• 20 May 2026: the Commission publishes its targeted consultation on the MiCA review.
• 24 September 2026: the EBA publishes its response.
• 30 September 2026: date of ESMA’s response (ESMA75-113276571-1721).
• 21 October 2026: the AMF publishes the French joint response.
• 30 June 2027: deadline for the Commission’s Article 140 report.

Token issuers: ARTs, reserves and multi-issuance

The EBA counted no authorised asset-referenced token (ART) at 1 September 2026, and the French authorities read that absence as a strong sign that the category “does not correspond to a genuine market need”. They propose exploring its removal, subject to a prior impact assessment, and favour bringing multi-currency stablecoins, which do not exist today, into the e-money token (EMT) category “with minimal changes to MiCA”.

On reserves, the paper is ready to explore replacing the deposit quota at Level 1 with minimum daily and weekly liquidity ratios, maturity limits and counterparty diversification, an approach it links to the US GENIUS Act. Noting that the RTS under Articles 36(4) and 38(5) have not been adopted, it also asks for an early clarification of which highly liquid financial instruments qualify.

For multi-issuance, where fungible tokens are issued both in the EU and in a third country, the French answer is yes to permitting it inside a dedicated regime, with a Commission equivalence decision and supervisory MoUs as preconditions. Once a scheme runs, safeguards would apply automatically, among them: the token is classified as significant, putting the EU issuer under direct EBA supervision; a reserve transfer mechanism is approved jointly by the EBA and the third-country authority; the EBA can require overcollateralisation if liquidity stress tests show deficits; and the EU issuer’s redemption obligation is limited to EU holders. Without those changes, the paper says, multi-issuance models “should be avoided”.

For reporting teams, the operative detail is the “European holder”. The paper wants a MiCA definition, which could rest on habitual or tax residence, and concedes that holder data passing from CASPs to issuers are still incomplete because many French entities obtained CASP authorisation only recently. Its fix is reporting requirements applied directly to CASPs.

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2902 applies to ART reporting under Article 22 and, through Article 58(3), to EMTs denominated in a currency that is not an official currency of an EU Member State. Its holder-location instructions use habitual residence for natural persons and registered office for legal persons. S 01.00 is an issuer template, while S 06.00 is supplied by CASPs to issuers.

For EMTs denominated in EU official currencies, EBA/GL/2024/16 sets supervisory reporting arrangements, including the CASP holder templates S 06.01 (legal entities) and S 06.02 (natural persons). As an interpretation, a future European-holder definition allowing tax residence would need to state its relationship with these existing location rules.

Three smaller issuer points. EMT recovery and redemption plans are rated “weaken”, with a suggestion that preparing and submitting them could be limited to issuers with more than EUR 100 million of EMTs outstanding, a threshold the paper links to Article 22(1) and EBA/GL/2024/16. Competent authorities would gain a power to oppose publication of an EMT white paper during a 30-day period after notification. On interest, the tick-box reads “allowed under defined conditions” for EMTs, yet the text keeps the issuer prohibition and confines the opening to indirect remuneration, such as rewards paid by CASPs or platforms, under Level 1 conditions and an EBA mandate.

Under current MiCA, Article 55 applies the recovery and redemption plan regime of Title III, Chapter 6 to EMT issuers, and Article 50(1) prohibits issuers from granting interest on EMTs. The EUR 100 million threshold in Article 22(1) and EBA/GL/2024/16 concerns reporting, not planning, so the proposal would need a Level 1 change.

CASPs: capital, reporting and a single licence

The paper wants significant CASPs on a prudential regime equivalent to that of MiFID investment firms, naming the IFR regime for Class 2 investment firms “or similar provisions”. Prudential safeguards would be own funds only, removing the insurance policy option in Article 67(4)(b). Annex IV minimum capital would rise moderately for Classes 1 and 2 (EUR 50,000 and EUR 125,000 today) and significantly for Class 3 trading platforms (EUR 150,000), and custody capital would depend on assets held.

It also flags, “along with other NCAs”, a drafting gap: in its reading of Annex IV as drafted, a CASP providing only Class 2 or Class 3 services falls back on the quarter of fixed overheads in Article 67(1)(b). ESMA has already answered the point in Q&A 2343 (12 December 2024): EUR 125,000 for a CASP providing only Class 2 services and EUR 150,000 for one providing only Class 3 services.

On reporting, the French authorities answer yes to regular reporting of CASPs’ direct crypto-asset holdings and large exposures to crypto derivatives, and no for leveraged-contract volumes and counterparty-risk data. Any transaction reporting should prioritise on-chain traceability such as wallet reporting, could run on two tiers with mandatory reporting at least for significant CASPs, and should go to ESMA as central recipient. Prudential reporting would be mandatory for all CASPs. The EBA noted on 24 September that MiCA lacks an overall mandate for issuer and CASP reporting requirements; the existing duties, including Article 22(3)’s CASP-to-issuer data requirements for ARTs, extended under Article 58(3) to EMTs denominated in non-EU official currencies, are in our MiCAR reporting obligations guide.

Whatever happens to the Commission’s December 2025 Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP), the paper wants the CASP significance test widened so that more than “one or two” fall under ESMA supervision: a significantly lower active-users threshold plus criteria such as assets in custody, group complexity and platform role. It adds that new reporting would be needed to determine significance.

The service list would follow MiFID II: a new dealing-on-own-account service, transfer folded into custody and administration, the exchange services possibly deleted as redundant. CASPs servicing EMTs would operate under a single MiCA licence, with MiCA exempting their EMT services from PSD3/PSR, in line with the EBA’s June 2025 opinion that CASP services with EMTs qualifying as payment services be authorised and supervised only under MiCA. Authorisation would also require an independent cybersecurity audit, repeated at regular intervals, whatever the CASP’s size.

DeFi, staking and lending: duties on the CASP

For DeFi the paper puts responsibility on regulated access points. CASPs connecting clients to genuinely decentralised protocols would carry due diligence, monitoring and liability for certain incidents, backed by private-sector certification of protocols against public standards, valid for three years and recorded on-chain. CASPs should in principle use certified protocols, although the paper would not bar others where the CASP’s own due diligence and enhanced disclosure apply. A protocol that is not fully decentralised belongs inside MiCA: the French authorities strongly disagree with letting such a protocol swap a CASP licence for a certificate.

Staking would get transparency and loss-risk requirements, and the paper says the narrow definition in ESMA Q&A 2067 could be confirmed in MiCA. Lending and borrowing would bring CASP requirements proportionate to volumes, without a separate authorisation. A dedicated NFT regime is judged unnecessary, and perpetual futures and DLT prediction markets that qualify as financial instruments are left to MiFID.

How the French position compares with the EBA and ESMA

The EBA answered selected questions; ESMA wrote a thematic paper, covered in our ESMA MiCA review response analysis, that takes no position on the issuer rows below.

The positions on reserves differ. The EBA also writes that minimum daily and weekly liquidity buckets, supplemented by maturity limits and diversification, “may be more risk sensitive than a fixed percentage held as deposits”, but it conditions any cut in the deposit floor on non-deposit reserve assets of sufficiently high quality, while the French paper is ready to explore replacing the quota at Level 1. On multi-issuance the French design is stricter in one respect, making significance automatic, and narrower in another: equivalence would open co-issuance with an EU-authorised issuer only, never EU distribution of tokens issued solely abroad.

The French authorities’ press release describes the proposal as an express prohibition on EU-authorised providers servicing stablecoins that do not meet MiCA requirements; the response text (Question 86) words it more widely, as crypto-assets that do not comply with MiCA. This is a proposed legislative change, not a prohibition enacted by the consultation response.

That is common ground with ESMA, whose Opinion ESMA75-113276571-1742 of 8 October 2026 states that CASPs should not provide crypto-asset services in relation to non-compliant ARTs or EMTs. ESMA expects national competent authorities to require remediation of remaining legacy exposures as soon as possible and no later than three months after publication, with any continued service strictly limited and time-bound. These are supervisory expectations, not a newly enacted prohibition. On its wording, the French proposal covers a wider class than ARTs and EMTs: it lists unauthorised stablecoins and crypto-assets issued by third-country entities as examples. Whether a given token is non-compliant remains a question under MiCA, and third-country issuance alone does not settle it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a CASP pay rewards on EMT balances because France supports regulating third-party remuneration?

Under the current text, Article 50(2) bars CASPs from granting interest when providing crypto-asset services related to EMTs, and Article 50(3) treats any remuneration or benefit linked to holding time as interest, including compensation from third parties. The French conditions would take effect only through a revised Level 1 text.

Would a credit institution issuing an EMT be caught by the reserve proposals?

The deposit-quota proposal concerns EMT-issuing EMIs. Credit institutions sit outside MiCA’s reserve and segregation requirements for non-bank issuers; the French paper keeps that exemption as the default and is open to an optional on-balance-sheet segregation regime where a use case requires it, whereas the EBA would keep the current approach unchanged.

Related Articles

• MiCA Review: The EBA’s Priorities for Token Issuers and CASPs: the EBA’s response on reserves, multi-issuance and reporting.
• ESMA MiCA Review Response: What CASPs and Token Issuers Should Map: ESMA’s proposals on classification, white papers, DeFi and CASP capital.
• AMLA MiCA Review Response: Five AML/CFT Gaps It Asks the EC to Review: the AML/CFT side of the same consultation.
• EC MiCAR Review: What European CASPs Should Submit: how the Commission structured the consultation.

Sources and References

• French authorities, Response to the targeted consultation on the review of MiCA (PDF): amf-france.org
• AMF, MiCA review: joint proposals (21 October 2026): English, French
• AMF press release on the joint proposals (21 October 2026): amf-france.org
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Articles 22, 36, 38, 45, 50, 54, 55, 58, 67, 140 and Annex IV: EUR-Lex
• Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2902, templates S 01.00 and S 06.00: EUR-Lex
• EBA response to the MiCA review consultation (24 September 2026): eba.europa.eu
• ESMA response, ESMA75-113276571-1721 (30 September 2026): esma.europa.eu
• ESMA Opinion ESMA75-113276571-1742 (8 October 2026), CASP services and non-MiCA-compliant ARTs and EMTs: esma.europa.eu
• ESMA Q&A 2343, minimum capital for CASPs: esma.europa.eu
• ESMA Q&A 2067, staking services: esma.europa.eu
• EBA Opinion on the interplay between PSD2 and MiCA (June 2025): eba.europa.eu
• EBA/GL/2024/16, Final report: eba.europa.eu
• European Commission, targeted consultation on the review of MiCA: finance.ec.europa.eu
• EBA, Final Report on draft RTS further specifying the liquidity requirements of the reserve of assets under Article 36(4) of MiCA (13 June 2024): eba.europa.eu
• European Commission, Market integration and supervision package (4 December 2025): finance.ec.europa.eu
• ESMA, MiCA Level 2 and Level 3 table (Article 140 deadlines): esma.europa.eu

Next checkpoint: the Article 140 report

Five French asks would touch existing processes: holder-residence data in issuer returns, a reserve policy built on liquidity ratios if the deposit quota goes, an IFR-style capital calculation for significant CASPs, a periodic CASP return to ESMA, and PSD licence scope for EMT transfer and custody. A gap map against those five items is the useful artifact before the Commission’s Article 140 report, due by 30 June 2027.

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