France's financial authorities have proposed tighter European oversight of crypto businesses, clearer stablecoin safeguards and explicit rules for staking and lending in a joint response to the review of the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. The proposals, publicised by the French finance ministry on 21 October, are recommendations for changing the framework, not newly adopted obligations for customers or platforms.
The response brings together the French Treasury, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the Banque de France and the prudential supervisor ACPR. Their position combines support for euro-denominated digital payments with demands for stronger investor protection and more consistent supervision. For businesses serving European customers, the document identifies the areas where France wants the next version of MiCA to be more precise.
Separate rules for tokens and financial instruments
The authorities do not want crypto regulation and conventional financial-services law merged into a single regime. Instead, they favour clearer boundaries and closer alignment over time. A financial instrument should remain subject to financial-instrument rules regardless of the technology used to issue or trade it. The same principle should apply to payment instruments, according to the joint statement.
That distinction matters when an operator offers several kinds of service. The French position calls for the relationship between MiCA, financial-instrument legislation and payment-services rules to be clarified where the same activity requires multiple permissions. Its aim is to reduce overlapping requirements without leaving gaps between the regimes or treating a product differently simply because it uses tokenisation.
On stablecoins, the authorities support the development of euro-denominated e-money tokens and tokenised bank deposits. They want these tools used more widely for cross-border payments with countries outside the EU and in tokenised finance. At the same time, they seek an explicit prohibition on EU-authorised providers offering services involving stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA.
Their approach also addresses tokens issued in more than one jurisdiction. They propose a framework for multi-issuance, where interchangeable stablecoin tokens are issued both inside the EU and in other countries. Access to global crypto liquidity would be preserved through regulated providers, but would depend on equivalent protection and reciprocal conditions rather than unrestricted access.
The proposed safeguards include assessments of whether other jurisdictions' arrangements are equivalent, cooperation between supervisors, and additional protections for reserves and redemption rights. This is a proposal about how cross-border issuance should be governed. It is not an announcement that a particular overseas stablecoin has received European approval, nor does the statement identify approved issuers.
Supervision, decentralised finance and staking
France also wants the European Securities and Markets Authority to play a stronger role in supervising major crypto-service providers and crypto conglomerates' crypto activities. The authorities favour prudential requirements that reflect the risks businesses actually take, alongside a coordinated response to providers operating without authorisation. These are linked supervision proposals rather than a new list of firms placed under ESMA.
For decentralised finance, the joint statement calls for responsibilities to be assigned clearly to intermediaries, suitable due-diligence obligations and protocol certification. The accompanying consultation response gives a more specific model: certification would begin with private providers and self-certification against public standards, while public authorities would set the standards and supervise certifiers.
Under that model, certification would attach to the underlying code, last three years and be recorded on-chain. The response does not advocate automatically preventing crypto-service providers from connecting customers to uncertified protocols. It instead envisages their own due diligence and enhanced disclosure, while mandatory certification would focus on sufficiently important fully decentralised protocols.
The response separately identifies staking risks including losses, validator failures, periods when assets cannot be withdrawn, and unclear remuneration or control of customer assets. It calls for transparency about rewards and risks. For crypto lending and borrowing, it favours specific, proportionate requirements for providers rather than a separate authorisation, including attention to collateral and the reuse of collateral.
The French proposals are distinct from ESMA's existing stablecoin-services wind-down expectations and from the French parliamentary proposal concerning tax on some crypto-to-stablecoin swaps. Both have been covered separately by Dalimss News. The current document concerns the future regulatory framework; it does not itself change an investor's tax bill or establish a new date on which these proposed measures take effect.
