Draft of an EU-regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA): a Swedish perspective

In September 2020, as part of its Digital Finance Package, the European Commission published a proposal for a pilot regime in the form of a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA). The proposal builds on the work carried out in the context of the Fintech Action Plan of 2018 and would, if adopted, establish a comprehensive EU regulatory sandbox regime for currently unregulated (crypto-) assets, markets and service providers. Our colleagues at the Hamburg office have written a very useful briefing on the proposal, available here.

At the end of October 2020, the Swedish Government, through the Ministry of Finance, published a Factual Memorandum (2020/21:FPM15) on the MiCA proposal. In the Factual Memorandum, the Government concludes that, as of today, there is no comprehensive domestic legislation on the subject matter of the MiCA proposal in place in Sweden, save for certain AML-related licensing requirements. The Government takes a positive position on the proposal and the European Commission’s work to create harmonised rules on an unregulated part of the financial market. The Factual Memorandum is available in Swedish here.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our experienced members of the financial services group: