On 5 January, in Paris, in a speech addressed to the French financial sector, Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said that France should not wait until the entry into force of EU rules on crypto-currencies that are to introduce obligatory licensing for local Digital Asset Service Providers (DASP).

The reason for introducing the licensing requirement for crypto-currencies is the ‘recent volatility in the sector’ which, as the Governor says, proves the need to move to obligatory licensing for crypto-currencies ‘as soon as possible’.

Right now in France crypto-firms must be registered at the French financial markets authority (Autorité des marchés financiers, AMF). A DASP licence is treated there as an additional option and the licence holders must meet a number of requirements on business organisation, management and financing. None of the 60 crypto-firms registered at the AMF holds a DASP licence. The French regulations allow the firms to operate without a licence by 2026, even if Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Markets in Crypto-assets, and amending Directive (EU) 2019/1937 (MiCA) enters into force and establishes the licensing system. The parliamentary deliberations on the amendment are to start as early as January.

As regards MiCA Regulation, the final vote was postponed from 2022 to February 2023. Member of the European Parliament Stefan Berger explained that the delay had been caused by the huge workload for lawyer-linguists in terms of length of the legal text.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-05/france-s-villeroy-urges-obligatory-licensing-for-crypto-firms