On 20 May 2026, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) opened its targeted consultation on the review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Responses are due by 31 August 2026 and must be submitted through the Commission’s online questionnaire.

The consultation has two tracks: a public consultation for individuals, and a targeted consultation for specialised stakeholders, covering more technical and legal questions. This article focuses on the targeted consultation.

This is the first formal step in the legislative review process anticipated under Article 140 of MiCA. The Commission is expected to report to the European Parliament and Council by 30 June 2027, on the application of MiCA and, where appropriate, accompany that report with a legislative proposal — what the market already refers to as “MiCA 2”.

Want to talk this through? Join us on 4 June, 2026, for a live webinar on From Transition to Transformation: MiCA Grandfathering Ends, the New Consultation, and What Comes Next - where we will unpack the consultation question by question and discuss what is at stake before the 31 August deadline.

Why this consultation matters

MiCA was designed before today’s stablecoin, tokenisation and DeFi markets had fully taken shape. It began applying in stages from 2024, but the market has continued to move quickly, and other jurisdictions have now put forward their own frameworks.

That is the backdrop to this consultation. The Commission is asking whether MiCA remains fit for purpose in a rapidly evolving global market, and whether the EU framework should be adjusted to reflect what has changed since the regulation was adopted.

The exercise is not limited to small technical corrections. It reopens core policy questions about Europe’s digital finance framework: whether MiCA can support globally relevant euro-denominated stablecoins, how the EU should position itself in a market increasingly shaped by USD denominated global stablecoins, where the regulatory perimeter should sit, and whether the current crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) framework is strong enough to protect the integrity of the EU market in practice. 

The consultation is organised into four parts:

1. Scope and definitions for crypto-assets other than asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) and e-money tokens (EMTs)
2. Requirements applying to ARTs, EMTs and their issuers
3. The legal framework for CASPs
4. Topics outside MiCA’s original scope, including decentralised finance, prediction markets, tokenised deposits and legal certainty for natively issued on-chain assets

Below are some of the key themes to watch.

Part 1: Where does MiCA’s perimeter sit?

The first part of the consultation deals with crypto-assets that are neither ARTs nor EMTs — what MiCA calls “other crypto-assets”. It opens with the architectural question at the heart of the framework: where should the boundary between MiCA and sectoral financial services legislation sit?

Today, crypto-assets that qualify as financial instruments remain outside MiCA and are instead governed by frameworks such as MiFID II, MAR and the Prospectus Regulation. That reflects the principle of “same activity, same risk, same rules”.

The challenge is that market reality is testing that boundary in both directions. Traditional financial institutions are entering the MiCA-regulated crypto-asset space. MiCA-authorised entities are expanding into products that look closer to traditional financial instruments. Tokenised fund interests, tokenised money-market instruments, wrapped assets, governance tokens, all raise difficult classification questions.

The consultation also revisits the design of Title II, including the white paper framework, marketing rules, ex ante notification model, retail withdrawal rights, civil liability and post-issuance updates. The Commission is asking whether the current model strikes the right balance between investor protection, market integrity and innovation.

Part 2: Stablecoins take centre stage

Part 2 is the longest and arguably the most politically charged section of the consultation. The Commission structures the discussion around three themes: the future role of stablecoins in the EU, the calibration of MiCA’s existing rules, and the treatment of global stablecoins.

The future role of stablecoins

The consultation begins by asking what stablecoins should become in the EU over the next five to ten years. Are they likely to become a mainstream retail payment instrument? A wholesale settlement rail? A complement to existing payment methods for cross-border payments? Or a transitional product that will eventually be displaced by CBDCs or commercial bank money innovations?

That framing is important because the answer drives the policy choices that follow. If stablecoins are treated mainly as crypto trading instruments, the focus is likely to remain on investor protection and market integrity. If they are treated as payment infrastructure, then redemption, liquidity, reserve management, operational resilience and supervisory reporting become much more central.

The consultation also asks how beneficial stablecoins could be for concrete use cases, including international payments, retail payments, wholesale payments, settlement of tokenised financial instruments, corporate treasury management and access to programmable financial services.

A clear vision of these use cases is essential for an informed policy debate. Stablecoins’ risks depend heavily on how they are used, at what scale, by whom, and in connection with which parts of the financial system.

Reopening the debate on interest-bearing stablecoins

The consultation reopens one of the most politically sensitive questions in MiCA: whether the prohibition on interest for EMTs and ARTs remains appropriate in its current form.

Under MiCA, issuers of e-money tokens are prohibited from granting interest in relation to EMTs. The prohibition also applies to CASPs providing services related to EMTs, and “interest” is defined broadly to include any remuneration or other benefit linked to the length of time a holder holds the token. 

That design reflects MiCA’s original policy choice: EMTs should function as means of payment, not as store-of-value products competing with bank deposits. But the effect is that euro EMTs are structurally non-remunerated even where the reserves backing them generate income. As the Blockchain for Europe Joint Report “Reforming MiCA for Euro Stablecoins” argues, this can weaken the competitiveness of euro-denominated stablecoins and push users either toward foreign-currency stablecoins or toward yield structures outside the regulated perimeter.

The consultation puts several questions back on the table. Should MiCA continue to prohibit all holder benefits linked to time held, even where they are funded solely from low-risk reserve income? Should the regime distinguish between issuer-paid interest, third-party rewards and regulated pass-through remuneration? And would allowing limited remuneration improve the competitiveness of euro EMTs, or would it create unacceptable risks for bank funding and monetary transmission? 

Global stablecoins and multi-issuance

A key part of the stablecoin discussion concerns global stablecoins and, in particular, multi-issuance models.

There are two questions running in parallel here. The first is a legal one: does MiCA, as currently written, allow multi-issuer models? The Commission gives a clear answer in the consultation. In its view, MiCA does not currently prohibit them.

That statement matters because EU authorities have adopted divergent stances:

• The ECB, in its 10 April 2026 non-paper on EU and third country stablecoin multi-issuance, argues for a reading of MiCA that would not permit third-country multi-issuance. Its concern is that third-country issuers are not generally required to comply with protections equivalent to MiCA, and that multi-issuance could expose EU token holders — and potentially the EU financial system as a whole — to material risk. 
• The European Systemic Risk Board reached a similar conclusion in its September 2025 recommendation. It flagged third-country multi-issuer schemes as amplifying financial stability risks that Union supervisors cannot adequately assess from outside the EU, and recommended that the Commission should not consider such schemes to be permitted under the current MiCAR framework. 

The second question is a policy one: even if multi-issuance is not prohibited under the current text, should MiCA continue to allow it, and under what conditions?

That is the debate the Commission is now reopening. It asks whether EU users and businesses benefit from access to global stablecoins, how important it is that such access is provided through EU-licensed issuers and CASPs, and what safeguards would be needed to manage the risks of multi-issuance.

Particularly, the consultation asks whether MiCA’s existing safeguards can mitigate multi-issuance risks and, more specifically, whether the EU share of a globally fungible stablecoin can be determined with sufficient accuracy and frequency, especially where tokens circulate through self-hosted wallets.

That question sits at the intersection of MiCA’s prudential framework and the compliance infrastructure needed to make that framework operational. On-chain data may show that a transfer occurred, but it does not, by itself, tell a supervisor whether the transfer changed the person legally entitled to the token, whether the holder is located in the Union, whether the holder is retail or institutional, or whether the movement was a payment or a first-party transfer.

That information cannot be inferred with supervisory confidence from on-chain data alone. It requires identity and transaction-context data held by CASPs, issuers and other reporting infrastructures.

This is where Travel Rule architecture becomes relevant beyond its AML/CFT purpose. Originator, beneficiary and wallet-control data can help attach legal and prudential meaning to otherwise pseudonymous on-chain flows. Multi-issuance safeguards — especially any mechanism that rebalances reserves between an EU issuer and a third-country issuer based on estimated EU holdings — are only as reliable as the data used to identify those EU holdings in the first place.

Effective Travel Rule implementation is therefore instrumental to unlocking properly managed multi-issuance frameworks.

Finally, the consultation also asks whether the EU should introduce an equivalence regime for global stablecoins, and how much reliance should be placed on third-country supervision.

This debate is in direct dialogue with the emerging U.S. approach. The GENIUS Act creates a controlled access route for foreign payment stablecoin issuers whose tokens are offered into the U.S. market. The foreign issuer must operate under a comparable home regime, register with the Comptroller of the Currency, and hold reserves in a U.S. financial institution sufficient to meet the liquidity demands of U.S. customers, unless a reciprocal arrangement provides otherwise.

The EU is confronting a similar policy problem. A globally transferable stablecoin may be issued, distributed or managed across several jurisdictions, but redemption pressure, liquidity risk and consumer protection concerns materialise locally. The policy question is how to preserve access to global liquidity while ensuring that EU holders are not dependent entirely on reserves, redemption arrangements and supervisory powers located outside the Union.

Part 3: The CASP perimeter after grandfathering

Part 3 examines the legal framework for CASPs. It revisits the scope of crypto-asset services under Article 3(16), the prudential regime and minimum capital requirements for different classes of CASPs, and the interaction between MiCA and the revised payments framework for transfer services involving EMTs.

One question stands out as the EU approaches the end of MiCA’s grandfathering period: are unauthorised crypto-asset service providers continuing to serve EU users?

This question goes to the credibility of the MiCA perimeter. By the end of the transitional period, the market is expected to look materially different. Around 200 CASPs are authorised according to ESMA’s Interim MiCA register, while there is an expectation that approximately 75% of the pre-MiCA VASP population will lose its registration status as national transitional periods expire.

Against that backdrop, the relevant supervisory question is not only which firms become authorised under MiCA, but also whether firms outside the EU authorisation framework continue to serve EU residents, and what tools supervisors or enforcement authorities should have to stop unauthorised service provision.

MiCA-authorised CASPs are investing in licensing, governance, safeguarding, conduct rules, operational resilience, market abuse controls and prudential requirements. If offshore or otherwise unauthorised providers can continue to serve EU residents, the result is an uneven playing field. Consumers remain exposed to providers outside the EU supervisory framework, while authorised firms carry the cost of compliance without the benefit of a protected market.

The FATF’s 2026 report on offshore VASPs is directly relevant here. It points to the risk that regulatory or enforcement developments can shift user activity toward offshore, unregistered providers. It also highlights the need for clearer criteria on what counts as active service provision into a jurisdiction, expectations for authorised VASPs to assess exposure to unlicensed counterparties, and stronger host-jurisdiction powers against offshore providers targeting local residents without authorisation.

These points map closely onto the post-grandfathering MiCA environment. The success of MiCA will depend on making sure its perimeter is meaningful in practice.

Part 4: Revisiting what MiCA left outside

The final part of the consultation looks at activities that were left outside MiCA’s original scope and asks whether the perimeter should now be redrawn.

Decentralised finance

MiCA excludes crypto-asset services provided in a fully decentralised manner without intermediaries. While that may sound straightforward, in practice decentralisation is rarely binary.

The consultation asks how to assess whether a service is truly fully decentralised and what indicators should matter: control over the protocol, governance rights, admin keys, front-end control, revenue capture, upgradeability, or the ability of identifiable persons to influence outcomes.

It also asks what role CASPs should play when connecting users to DeFi. Options range from warnings and disclosures, to CASP liability for incidents, to limiting access to certified applications or verified pools, to whitelists, blacklists or outright restrictions on CASP facilitation of DeFi access.

Prediction markets

The consultation also asks whether DLT-enabled prediction markets create opportunities or risks for EU consumers and markets, and whether they should fall under MiFID or MiCA when facilitated through smart contracts.

In the U.S., prediction markets have become a live test case for regulatory perimeter-setting. The CFTC is pursuing a clearer federal framework for prediction markets, asserting that event contracts offered to the public may fall within the Commodity Exchange Act as swaps or futures traded on regulated venues, while several states continue to challenge certain markets as gambling or contrary to public policy. 

Tokenised deposits and natively issued assets

The consultation also explores tokenised deposits, including their use cases, regulatory constraints and interaction with the CRD/CRR framework and the Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive.

This is part of a broader question running through the consultation: how should EU law treat assets that are issued, recorded and transferred natively on-chain?

If tokenised deposits, tokenised securities, stablecoins and natively issued assets are expected to support future financial market infrastructure, participants need clarity on legal nature, transfer finality, holder rights, insolvency treatment and supervisory responsibilities.

What comes next

Responses to the consultation are due by 31 August 2026 through the online questionnaire on the Commission's website. 

Notabene will be following this consultation closely and engaging in the policy conversation.

If you want to dig into what the end of the grandfathering period and the new consultation mean in practice, join us for our upcoming webinar on June 11, 2026:

— From Transition to Transformation: MiCA Grandfathering Ends, the New Consultation, and What Comes Next. We'll walk through the policy choices on the table and what they mean for the future of Europe’s digital financial infrastructure.

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