France’s Treasury, markets regulator, central bank and prudential supervisor have jointly proposed changes to the European Union’s MiCA framework that would place clearer duties on intermediaries offering customers access to decentralized-finance protocols.
The October 21 joint position calls for defined responsibility, proportionate due-diligence duties and protocol certification. It also asks European lawmakers to clarify treatment of staking, crypto lending and borrowing.
The proposal does not immediately impose liability on every exchange or wallet. It is France’s contribution to the European Commission’s MiCA review. Any binding obligation would require an EU legislative or regulatory process and could differ materially from the French position.
French authorities also want stronger supervision of significant crypto service providers and conglomerates by the European Securities and Markets Authority. They support euro stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits, while proposing an explicit ban on EU-authorized firms providing services for stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA.
For stablecoins issued both inside and outside the EU, the document proposes equivalence reviews, supervisory cooperation and additional safeguards for reserves and redemption rights. That could affect global issuers using fungible tokens across multiple legal entities.
TOKEN RECON ASSESSMENT
France is trying to locate accountable parties around DeFi without declaring every protocol a regulated intermediary. The unresolved issue is who performs due diligence when access is split among a front end, wallet, aggregator and autonomous smart contracts. Draft EU text that assigns liability to a specific access provider would be the decisive change. Until then, this is a policy direction, not a new legal duty.
