Economic and Monetary Affairs MEPs have voted in favour of a temporary common EU pilot regime for financial services based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). The project follows a ‘sandbox’ approach which allows for temporary derogations from certain requirements under EU financial services legislation. Eligible financial instruments will be limited and subject to the following value thresholds:
- Shares (limit: market capitalisation of less than EUR 200m)
- Bonds including sovereign bonds (limit: issuance size of less than EUR 500m)
- ETFs (limit: issuance size of less than EUR 500m)
- UCITS (limit: issuance size of less than EUR 500m)
Additionally, operators of DLT can admit new financial instruments only until their total market value reaches EUR 5bn.