What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: AFME’s September 2026 MiCA review paper says tokenised financial instruments should remain under MiFID and other securities laws rather than MiCA, supports global and multi-issuance stablecoin arrangements through equivalence and stronger supervisory cooperation, and also calls for a pan-European “28th regime” plus a conflict-of-law framework for DLT-based assets.
- Institutions involved: The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) is the industry body making the recommendations, with MiCA and MiFID II as the core EU rulebooks in question; the discussion also touches stablecoin oversight and EU authorities reviewing the crypto-asset framework.
- Regulatory/technical context: The issue is where to draw the line between tokenised securities and crypto-assets: AFME argues that financial instruments should stay within established securities regulation, while MiCA review debates are also examining stablecoins, DLT-based assets and cross-border supervisory arrangements.
- What to watch next: Watch for the European Commission and other EU authorities’ next steps in the MiCA review and whether they preserve the current boundary keeping tokenised securities under MiFID; beyond that, no specific next milestone was identified in the material reviewed.
Why it matters
The outcome will affect how banks and capital-markets firms structure tokenised products in Europe, including whether they face securities-law treatment or a different crypto-asset regime.
HKMA Relevance
Indirect: EU decisions on tokenised securities and stablecoin treatment can influence global regulatory approaches that Hong Kong market participants and the HKMA monitor when shaping cross-border digital-asset policy.