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France wants a change : On Monday, the French financial supervisor (AMF) published an op-ed co-authored with its Italian and Austrian counterparts calling for the supervision of MiCA-regulated CASPs to be transferred to ESMA, the EU’s financial regulator.
Why it matters
Since January 2025, MiCA has been fully in force, allowing any company that secures a license in one EU country to passport its services across all 27 member states. So far, regulators have granted 56 licenses, but industry participants are warning of “significant divergences in implementation” across jurisdictions.
France’s call for centralization comes against the backdrop of its own declining influence in the licensing race. After playing a leading role in shaping MiCA through its early crypto legislation, France has so far issued only 6 MiCA licenses, while Germany has already granted 18 and the Netherlands 14. But even more significant, not a single major player or exchange platform has chosen to set up headquarters in France.
Regulatory bet gone wrong
Once seen as a prime destination for global platforms such as OKX, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini, France has lost ground. Market participants point to the AMF’s slow approval process and a sudden shift to a stricter stance.
“The AMF’s strategy was to enforce one of the strictest versions of MiCA, but other countries such as Germany did not follow,” a source close to the regulator told Blockstories. “This push for consistency is also a way to bring France back into play by aligning others with its doctrine.”
The shift coincides with the arrival of Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, who became AMF president in October 2022 after serving as Director General of the French Banking Federation (FBF).
Barbat-Layani’s tenure has been marked by the stalled MiCA licensing of Binance. Since the platform’s legal troubles in the United States and the launch of a French judicial investigation in 2023, the process has been frozen.
“As long as Barbat-Layani heads the AMF, it is difficult to see how Binance could be authorized in France. This is now a reputational and political issue,” several sources told Blockstories. Transferring supervision to ESMA would ease the pressure.
Reservations against Malta
According to our information, the AMF has also not taken kindly to Malta registering platforms that had initially considered France for their licensing. In comments to Reuters, the executive even raised the possibility of “refusing the EU passport” for certain players in France, without naming them directly. Acting in this way could seriously undermine one of MiCA’s fundamental principles.
To support its argument, the AMF can point to a report published by ESMA last July, which highlighted certain leniencies shown by the Maltese regulator when registering a CASP, whose name was not disclosed.
What's next
Transferring supervision to ESMA would raise numerous questions, such as the conditions for revoking licenses from certain players or supervising entities that the European regulator itself did not authorize.
More importantly, such changes would require a vote in the European Parliament, triggering a legislative process of three to five years, according to several legal experts interviewed by Blockstories. “Transferring these powers was already on the table during the MiCA negotiations. But now, implementing it seems extremely difficult,” a European official sighed.
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