The European Parliament has published its report on the proposal for a Regulation of crypto asset service providers. A key change is to specify that any person providing any relevant services to EU citizens must both be authorised and have a legal representative somewhere in the EU; and that authorisation should be required even if services are provided solely at the initiative of the customer. It specifies that the Commission should consider the scale of breaches and notes that pop up “I agree” boxes and similar should not be used as a way of circumventing the Regulation.
Other amendments:
- clarify that the Regulation will apply to both issuers and offerors of the relevant crypto assets;
- require the Commission to include crypto-asset mining in the economic activities that contribute substantially to climate change mitigation in the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy by 1 January 2025;
- adds further conditions for authorisation;
- adds further requirements relating to the provision of a white paper;
- adds reporting obligations to ESMA;
- adds a section on rights on issuers of asset-referenced tokens or the reserve assets;
- provides for providers to have policies to comply with the Funds Transfer Regulation;
- requires ESMA to keep a register of non-compliant providers;
- allow EBA to request information on e-money tokens; and
- require ESMA to report annually on market developments.