The AMF has published its main proposals as part of the European Commission’s consultation on supervisory convergence, which was opened until May 2021.
“Granting ESMA the power of direct supervision of public offers of crypto assets in the EU and of crypto asset service providers would create obvious economies of scale for all national supervisors and concentrate expertise in an efficient way, for the common European benefit,” said the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), France’s markets regulator.
“The aim of these proposals is to endow ESMA with a greater role in order to achieve harmonized, unified supervision, ensuring a level playing field while minimizing the possibility of regulatory arbitrage,” the AMF said in a statement.
The AMF is thus in favour of:
- Evolving towards genuinely centralised supervision within ESMA of new unregulated activities, and of certain categories of entities and activities on account of their cross-border nature, or their significant or systemic impact: ESMA could be given a role in authorising and monitoring these entities, for example European clearing houses;
- An ESMA endowed with redesigned tools such as no action letters comparable to those existing in other jurisdictions, such as the US. These make it possible to quickly and temporarily suspend the application of certain rules when they may have harmful consequences.
- ESMA governance allowing for a decision-making process with a more European dimension, which could be achieved through an independent Management Board, composed of permanent members, empowered to take decisions on supervisory convergence and through a weighted majority vote by the Board on strategic decisions;
- Simplification of the way in which the rules are drawn up, in order to facilitate possible recalibration, where this is necessary, and by privileging maximum harmonisation of the regulation, to minimise divergent interpretations from one country to another.
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