The EU Commission will examine the depth of the EU safety net for stablecoin holders.

By Valentina Za

MILAN (Reuters) – The European Union is examining the extent to which EU rules on crypto-assets would protect union investors’ redemption rights in the same e-money tokens (MMTs), whose value is linked to a single official currency. .

The country’s banking and insurance regulator, France’s Autorité de Control Prudential et de Resolution (ACPR), last year asked the European Bank’s authority to investigate whether technically similar and fully liquidating EMTs could be obtained by an authorized entity in Europe. Union and elsewhere are not subject to EU laws.

The EBA referred the matter to the European Commission as it was a matter of interpretation of EU law.

The European Union In 2023, the MCR, known as the MCR, passed broad rules for crypto assets, under which issuers of EMTs must receive regulatory approval, including as a bank deposit, with sold tokens that investors can return when necessary. .

With US President Donald Trump promising to ease the regulatory burden on cryptocurrency companies, this week the US Securities and Exchange Commission created a task force to work on new rules.

Some issuers operate both inside and outside the EU. For example, US dollar-backed ‘USDC’, the world’s second largest stablecoin by market value, Circle, operates in the EU as Circle SAS. USDCs issued by Circle SAS are fully functional with those issued by Circle LLC.

The French ACPR asked whether it would be possible to allow only EU customers to submit redemption requests to an EU-based entity if the same EMT provision were made both inside and outside the EU.

ACPR declined to comment further.

“There is already quite a bit of flexibility built into the MCA regulation so that it doesn’t stifle innovation,” said Andrea Resti, professor of finance at Milan’s Bocconi University.

“Starting to interpret the laws in ways that are not clearly stated in the text can create dangers and weaken the effectiveness of the newly incorporated laws.”

(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)