The European Parliament has postponed the final vote on the long-awaited cryptocurrency regulation, the so-called Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, to April 2023. This is the second postponement in a row for the final vote, which was previously moved from November 2022 to February 2023.
The reason for the latest postponement is a simple technical problem. The 400-page official document might not be translated into the 24 official languages of the EU in time. Legal documents such as the MiCA, drafted in English, must comply with EU standards and be published in all 24 official languages of the Union. The first delay in November 2022, which moved the vote to February, was also due to translation problems.
The final vote postponement means that European financial regulators will have to wait longer to develop implementing rules for the legislation. Once MiCA receives formal approval, financial regulators have 12-18 months to develop technical standards.
The European Parliament committee adopted the MiCA legislation in October 2022, nearly two years following it was first introduced in September 2020. This second delay creates an even bigger problem now that there is growing demand for the legislation to be approved, especially in the wake of the sector problems caused by the FTX collapse.
Stefan Berger, a member of the European Parliament’s economic committee, previously called the collapse of FTX one of the “Lehman Brothers moments” that “must be prevented”. With this, he argued for the need for a regulation similar to MiCA.
With MiCA, European decision-makers aim to create a standard regulation for crypto-assets at the EU level. Thereby providing legal certainty for crypto-assets not regulated by existing EU legislation.
The Cryptocurrency Regulation will set guidelines for the operation, structure and governance of issuers of digital assets/tokens. The legislation will also offer rules on transparency and disclosure requirements for the issuance and trading of cryptoassets.
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