At the end of each month, the SAFE Regulatory Radar highlights a selection of important news and developments on financial regulation at the national and EU level.
MiCA: Supervisory guidelines to prevent market abuse
On 29 April 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published guidelines on supervisory practices for competent authorities to prevent and detect market abuse under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation(MiCA).
These guidelines are intended to ensure a consistent and effective approach to supervising crypto-asset markets across the European Union based on Article 92(3) of MiCA and Article 16 of the ESMA regulation.
The guidelines apply to competent authorities as defined in Article 3(1)(35) of MiCA and cover the prevention and detection of insider dealing, unlawful disclosure of inside information, and market manipulation. They emphasize the importance of a common supervisory culture through open dialogue with the industry and interactions with other competent authorities, proportionality, and the integration of existing supervisory practices to ensure market integrity.
Their key feature is that they are specifically tailored to the unique aspects of crypto-asset markets, including the intensive use of social media and the cross-border nature of crypto trading.
CASPs: Draft rules to clarify when a central contact point is required to combat financial crime
On 25 April 2025, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued new draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) defining when crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) must appoint a central contact point as part of its effort to combat financial crime, particularly money laundering and terrorist financing.
The criteria for appointing a central contact point are based on the size and scale of the CASP's activities in the host Member State. The RTS extends the requirement for appointing central contact points to CASPs, aligning them with electronic money institutions and payment service providers. In this regard, a central contact point must be appointed if the cumulative value of the services and activities carried out by the CASP’s establishments is expected to exceed EUR 3 million per financial year or has exceeded EUR 3 million in the previous financial year.
The appointment of central contact points aims to facilitate better Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision and oversight, helping to mitigate ML/TF risks associated with cross-border crypto-asset services. To this end, the RTS seek to enhance the fight against financial crime by ensuring that CASP comply with local AML/CFT obligations by appointing central contact points.
BRRD: Updated technical standards on resolution planning reporting
On 7 May 2025, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued its final report on draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) for resolution planning reporting. This report aims to update and harmonize the reporting requirements for resolution planning, ensuring that resolution authorities can access relevant and accurate information to draw up resolution plans and perform resolvability assessments. The ITS aim to harmonize and centralize resolution planning reporting, reducing parallel data collections and eliminating redundant data points.
The ITS introduce a modular core-plus-supplement approach. This approach reduces reporting obligations for certain categories of reporting entities, depending on their size and complexity to reduce the reporting burden on smaller or less complex entities. The scope of reporting entities has been expanded to include liquidation entities not subject to simplified obligations, with reduced reporting obligations compared to resolution entities. The intention behind this is to promote proportionality and reduce the reporting burden on smaller entities.
Additionally, the ITS remove data points overlapping with other reporting requirements (e.g., MREL/TLAC, CoRep, FinRep) to avoid double reporting.
The ITS also introduce new rules on the reporting framework. Notably, they modify some of the submission deadlines in order to ensure alignment among the resolution authorities. The Relevant Legal Entity (RLE) threshold has been reduced from 5% to 2%, broadening the scope of entities for which data is collected.
The ITS introduce granular reporting of liabilities data and extend the data reported for the criticality assessment of economic functions, financial market infrastructures (FMI), and relevant services with the aim of enabling resolution authorities to analyze financial interconnections and exclusions from bail-in more effectively.
In conclusion, the ITS enhance the usability of data collected by resolution authorities, reflecting the latest developments in resolution planning and crisis preparedness. It promotes harmonization, proportionality, and simplification, ensuring that resolution authorities have access to the necessary information, while minimizing the reporting burden on institutions.
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Pietro Chiarelli is Financial Policy Analyst at the SAFE Policy Center.
