France’s financial authorities want the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to supervise more crypto firms directly, and they want staking, crypto lending and stablecoins issued both inside and outside the EU brought under clearer rules. The French Treasury, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), the Banque de France and the prudential supervisor ACPR published their joint answer to the European Commission’s MiCA review consultation this week: the Treasury page is dated 20 October 2026 and the AMF news release 21 October. The full response runs to 73 pages.
The headline request is a bigger role for ESMA over “significant” crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) and over crypto-conglomerates. The full text goes further than the press release. It asks for the significance test to be redrawn so that more than a handful of firms qualify, for a single European desk for token offers, for tighter limits on offshore exchanges that claim their EU clients came to them unprompted, and for EU-licensed platforms to be barred from serving stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA.
None of this is law. It is one member state’s answer to a consultation the Commission ran from 20 May to 30 September 2026, according to the Treasury. Under Article 140 of MiCA, the Commission owes Parliament and the Council a full report on the regulation by 30 June 2027, and that report may come with a legislative proposal. No proposal has been tabled yet, and the Commission has not published a summary of the answers it received.
France’s MiCA review answer in one table
The French authorities rated and commented on dozens of questions. These are the points with the most weight for exchanges, stablecoin issuers and users, with where the text stands today.
| Topic | MiCA today | What the French authorities propose |
|---|---|---|
| ESMA supervision of exchanges | A CASP is “significant” from 15 million average active EU users | Lower that threshold “significantly” and add criteria such as assets in custody and group complexity |
| Crypto-conglomerates | No group-level crypto supervisor | ESMA supervises their crypto activities, plus a body bringing together the national authorities concerned |
| Token offers (white papers) | Notified to a national authority, no approval, then passported | One-stop shop at ESMA, with enforcement powers moved to ESMA |
| Reverse solicitation | Allowed, framed by ESMA guidelines | Clear tests: ads, sponsorship and influencers count as solicitation; a cooling-off period after promotion |
| Non-compliant stablecoins | ESMA guidance on non-MiCA tokens | An explicit ban on EU-licensed CASPs serving them |
| Multi-issued stablecoins | Not clearly addressed | Permitted only with equivalence checks, supervisory cooperation and reserve and redemption safeguards |
| Interest on stablecoins | Issuers may not pay interest | Keep the issuer ban; regulate, rather than ban, rewards paid by platforms and other third parties |
| Staking, lending, DeFi | Staking and lending not separately regulated | Targeted rules on disclosure, loss risk and collateral; protocol certification and CASP due diligence for DeFi |
Who would answer to ESMA: widening the “significant CASP” test
Under Article 85 of MiCA, a crypto-asset service provider counts as significant once it has an average of 15 million active users in the EU over a calendar year. That status brings closer coordination with ESMA, but day-to-day supervision stays with the national authority that licensed the firm.
In early December 2025 the Commission put forward its market integration and supervision package, known as MISP, which ESMA welcomed on 4 December and which would move direct supervision of certain crypto-asset service providers to ESMA. That package is still being negotiated. The French response says that, whatever comes out of those talks, the significance criteria inside MiCA should be rewritten “to avoid the situation where only one or two CASPs would come under European supervision by ESMA”.
The 15 million threshold, in the French view, “should be significantly decreased”. No new figure is offered. Instead the authorities list other tests worth exploring: the value of crypto-assets held in custody, how complex the group structure is, whether the firm runs a trading platform, risky business models, the outsourcing of key functions and the firm’s supervisory history. They add that new reporting will be needed just to tell which firms cross the line. Significant CASPs should also hold capital on the model of investment firms: the response suggests applying to them the prudential regime for Class 2 investment firms under the IFR, or similar rules, rather than MiCA’s lighter one.
Large groups get a section of their own. Some international crypto groups run a trading platform, custody, exchange services and stablecoin issuance across several legal entities and countries, the text notes. For those crypto-conglomerates, France wants ESMA to supervise the crypto activities, “as supported by the French authorities in the negotiations on the MISP proposal”, alongside a body of the national authorities concerned that would hold a consolidated view of the group. The response does not name any company.
Two smaller requests matter to banks and to the AMF’s own workload. Banks and investment firms that already hold a licence can offer crypto custody after a simple notification, which the French authorities call a mere completeness check. They find it “less logical” to let those firms run custody without the checks a CASP licence requires, cyber checks included. And the deadlines national authorities have to assess CASP applications are “difficult to meet”, so France wants them changed.
One European desk for token offers, and fewer ways around the rules
MiCA’s chapter on token offers (Title II, which excludes stablecoins) lets an issuer notify a white paper to one national authority and then passport the offer across the Union, without prior approval. The French authorities write that “the ex ante notification model without approval is its weakest provision”. Their fix is the one Paris already pushed with Italy’s Consob and Austria’s FMA in a joint position paper in September 2025: a European one-stop shop run by ESMA for filing and managing token offers, with the enforcement powers moved to ESMA as well.
The argument is practical. Most offers target most member states, so each national authority receives near-identical passport filings and handles them in its own way. That brings uneven treatment, extra work for issuers and cost for supervisors, the response says. National authorities would keep a way in: they could ask ESMA to take a case.
The tightest language is reserved for firms based outside the EU. Reverse solicitation lets a non-EU exchange serve an EU resident who approached it on their own initiative. France wants the regulation itself, rather than ESMA guidelines alone, to spell out what counts as solicitation: advertising banners, sponsorship deals and promotion by anyone linked to the firm, influencers and celebrities included. A contact form asking investors for details would count as solicitation too. A firm that blocks EU users from its website would show it is not soliciting them.
One proposal goes beyond ESMA’s current guidelines. MiCA should set how long a non-EU firm that has promoted itself in Europe must wait before it can again rely on reverse solicitation. The French authorities also want ESMA to coordinate detection, blacklisting and blocking requests across member states, so that a provider blocked in one country cannot keep soliciting clients from another. Offers relayed by influencers “escape the white paper regime”, the text says, and the answer it proposes is automated detection and rules for influencers, not lighter obligations for issuers.
Stablecoins: multi-issuance allowed only with safeguards
Multi-issuance is the model in which one stablecoin is issued by an EU entity and by an entity outside the EU, with the tokens treated as interchangeable. Circle’s USDC works this way: it keeps separate reserves for EU holders while the tokens stay interchangeable across borders, Ledger Insights reported in October 2025, after the European Systemic Risk Board recommended banning the model. France ticks “Yes” to keeping MiCA open to the model, then sets conditions: equivalence assessments of the foreign regime, cooperation between supervisors and extra guarantees on reserves and redemption. Without those changes, the answer is blunt: “In the absence of such adjustments to the regulatory framework, and given the risks identified, multi-issuance models should be avoided.” Coindaro has covered how the EBA takes over supervision of USDC reserves from 12 November.
The French text also backs limiting MiCA redemption rights to EU holders, but only in a multi-issuance set-up. Without that limit, holders outside the EU could take tokens issued abroad to the European issuer for redemption, and in periods of stress those flows could drain the reserves held in the EU. For a single EU issuer, it sees no reason for such a limit, since that issuer must back every token in circulation wherever the holder lives.
For tokens that never sought a MiCA licence, the AMF release asks for an explicit ban on EU-authorised CASPs “providing services on stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA requirements”. Tether chose not to seek MiCA authorisation for USDT, the largest stablecoin, The Paypers reported in July. ESMA has already given EU crypto firms until January to drop non-MiCA stablecoins; the French request would write that line into the regulation itself.
On yield, France keeps one door shut and opens another. The ban on issuers paying interest on e-money tokens should stay, the response argues, citing ECB warnings that stablecoin growth could drain bank deposits and make bank funding more volatile. It quotes the ECB’s Financial Stability Review, which puts the stablecoin market above $280 billion, and a 2026 New York Fed study on how stablecoins eat into banks’ deposit base. Rewards paid by third parties are treated differently: platforms paying holders, funds earning a return on stablecoins they hold, returns from using the tokens for settlement. Those should be regulated rather than banned, the authorities write, pointing to the US GENIUS Act, “which prohibits issuer interest but not third-party rewards”. The conditions they list: transparency towards holders, no guaranteed return, no marketing as a savings product and monitoring of the effect on bank deposits, with the details left to the EBA.
Supervisors would also get sharper tools against new tokens. France wants a clear power to block a new e-money token issuance when there are reasonable grounds to suspect a breach, and a 30-day window after notification in which an authority could oppose the publication of an e-money token white paper. New issuances can reach very large volumes in a short time, the text says, so powers that only bite after the fact come too late.
Paris backs euro-denominated stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits, in particular for cross-border payments with countries outside the EU and for tokenised finance. It does not expect stablecoins to become a mainstream retail payment method in the EU within five years. Wholesale central bank money remains the preferred settlement asset, and the response cites the ECB’s Pontes settlement service, expected by the end of 2026.
Staking, lending and DeFi: the rules France wants
Asked whether leaving staking outside separate regulation is adequate, the French authorities answer no. When an exchange or another regulated firm offers staking to clients, those clients face risks the current framework does not cover well, according to the response: losses, slashing, validator underperformance or failure, lock-up periods, opaque remuneration and unclear treatment of client assets. Requirements should cover transparency, the nature and source of rewards and the risk of loss. Coindaro’s glossary explains how staking works.
Crypto lending and borrowing should be regulated too, without a separate licence, with requirements on disclosure, collateral management and rehypothecation, and proportionate to the volumes involved. At the border with securities law, the hardest cases named in the response are yield-bearing products and proof of stake coin with a protocol that stakes it for you and issues a transferable token (such as Lido stETH or rETH) representing the deposit plus rewards, which you can use or sell while the coins stay staked.">liquid staking tokens, which may in some cases count as units in investment funds.
On wallet.">decentralised finance, the release asks for a “secure and proportionate” framework with clearly assigned responsibilities for intermediaries, due diligence duties and protocol certification. The full response says regulators should tell genuinely decentralised protocols from those that are only nominally so. For exchanges that open DeFi to their clients, it builds the framework on due diligence and ongoing monitoring, prior certification of protocols, and liability: a CASP that actively gave access should answer for certain incidents, in particular when it skipped proper checks, ignored known vulnerabilities or kept access open despite clear signs of illicit activity. Certification would apply only to fully decentralised protocols above a significance level, for example by total value locked, would last three years and be recorded on-chain. CASPs could still connect clients to uncertified protocols, under their own checks and with stronger disclosure.
What it would mean for exchanges, issuers and users
Large exchanges serving EU users are the first group affected. Without new criteria, the French authorities warn, only one or two CASPs would end up under ESMA. A lower user threshold plus custody and group criteria would put more of them under ESMA, in Paris, rather than under the national authority that granted their licence. Which firms, the response does not say.
Offshore platforms that market to Europeans without a licence would lose room. Sponsorship and influencer campaigns would count as solicitation, and a cooling-off period would stop a firm from switching back to reverse solicitation the day a campaign ends.
For stablecoin issuers, the message is mixed. Issuers with a MiCA licence would keep a market protected by a ban on unlicensed tokens at EU exchanges. A dollar issuer using a US and an EU entity would face equivalence and reserve conditions before multi-issuance is formally allowed. Platforms that want to pay rewards on stablecoins would get a legal route, with conditions.
Retail users would see more disclosure on staking and lending products, and DeFi access through exchanges that comes with due diligence on the protocols offered.
What happens next: the 30 June 2027 MiCA report
The consultation closed on 30 September 2026. The Commission now has to weigh France’s answer against those of other member states, supervisors and the industry. Its full report under Article 140 of MiCA is due by 30 June 2027 and may be accompanied by a legislative proposal; the article also asks the Commission to look at whether the Article 85 thresholds are right.
Separately, the MISP package remains under negotiation in the Council and the European Parliament, and its final scope for crypto firms is not settled. Any change to MiCA would then go through the usual EU process, with Parliament and the Council each taking a position. For now, nothing changes for EU crypto users or for the firms licensed under the regulation.
MiCA in brief
MiCA, the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, has applied in full since 30 December 2024, six months after its stablecoin rules took effect. It licenses exchanges, brokers and custodians as crypto-asset service providers with a passport valid across the EU, and sets rules for stablecoin issuers and for token white papers. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains what it means for users. The French authorities sum up their wider position in one line of the AMF release: the convergence of crypto and traditional finance “does not require merging their legal regimes, which must remain distinct”.