In light of the current unrest in the cryptocurrency markets, the governor of the Bank of France has called for more stringent licencing requirements for crypto businesses in France, as reported by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, on January 5, Francois Villeroy de Galhau said France shouldn’t wait for upcoming EU cryptocurrency laws to enact mandatory licencing for regional providers of digital asset services (DASPs).
The crypto-licensing regime provided by the Markets in Crypto Assets bill (MiCA) of the European Parliament isn’t anticipated to take effect until possibly some time in 2024.
As per a recent report of Bloomberg, Villeroy noted, “All the disorder in 2022 feeds a simple belief: it is desirable for France to move to an obligatory licensing of DASP as soon as possible, rather than just registration.”
Cointelegraph further noted that since September 2020, MiCA has been slowly making its way through the EU Parliament.
The EU Council, European Commission, and European Parliament all participated in negotiations to create the crypto framework, which was approved by the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on October 10, Cointelegraph stated.
From the end of 2022 to February, the final plenary vote for MiCA was rescheduled. The delay, according to European Parliament member Stefan Berger, was caused by “the enormous amount of work for the lawyer linguists, given the length of the legal text,” he told Cointelegraph in November.
(With insights from Cointelegraph)