What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: Ledger Insights reported that the European Commission had proposed lifting the DLT Pilot Regime limit from €6 billion to €100 billion per DLT market infrastructure, while EU finance ministers want €300 billion with a possible later increase to €500 billion via a delegated act; it also reported the Council raised a related cap for DLT-based bank settlement schemes from the Commission’s proposed €10 billion to €50 billion.
- Institutions involved: The story centers on the Council of the EU, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, ECB President Christine Lagarde, ESMA, and industry participants such as banks and market infrastructures operating under the DLT Pilot Regime.
- Regulatory/technical context: The DLT Pilot Regime is the EU framework for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology. The Council’s position sits within the market integration and supervision package (MISP), while ECB officials have separately argued that Europe’s tokenised markets face risks from platform fragmentation and need interoperable arrangements and a trusted settlement asset in central bank money.
- What to watch next: Watch for negotiations with the European Parliament on the final MISP text and whether the €300 billion DLT Pilot ceiling is retained, amended, or paired with tighter interoperability safeguards; beyond that, no specific next milestone was identified in the read text.
Why it matters
A much higher DLT Pilot threshold could let larger tokenised securities projects scale inside the EU’s regulatory sandbox sooner, but it also sharpens the policy debate over whether faster growth could worsen fragmentation in European capital markets.
HKMA Relevance
Direct: The EU’s stance on scaling tokenised market infrastructure could influence how Hong Kong banks, exchanges, and policymakers benchmark overseas approaches to tokenised securities and post-trade regulation.