Emmanuel Moulin, governor of the Banque de France (France’s central bank) and chair of the ACPR, France’s banking supervisor, said on October 2, 2026, that the EU’s crypto-asset rulebook needs to be adapted to tokenized finance. A targeted revision of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), he said, could clarify how tokenized deposits and stablecoins are treated, and set a clearer framework for non-euro stablecoins used in everyday payments and for multi-issuer models.
Moulin spoke at the opening of the ACPR-AMF Fintech Forum, held at the Banque de France in Paris ten years after the forum was created. It was his first edition as governor. The speech came two days after the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its answer to the European Commission’s consultation on the MiCA review.
“A targeted revision of the MiCA Regulation could clarify the legal treatment of tokenised deposits and the regime applicable to stablecoins,” Moulin said, according to the English text published by the Banque de France. He also proposed making the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime permanent within the Commission’s Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP), and said “it would be advisable to raise the activity ceilings to around EUR 300 billion.”
A national position in a crowded MiCA review
The Commission’s targeted consultation document on the MiCA review notes that “the terms ‘tokenised deposit’ and ‘deposit tokens’ are not defined terms,” and that “MiCA does not currently prohibit multi-issuer models.” In a multi-issuer model, as the document describes it, a global stablecoin issuer operates under MiCA for the tokens offered or held in the EU, and under the rules of the other jurisdictions where it also issues or offers them.
EU supervisors have already answered the Commission. On September 24, the European Banking Authority recommended that the Commission consider regulatory changes for third-country multi-issuer schemes, to mitigate “the significant to very significant risks posed by these schemes.” On September 30, ESMA called for “explicit rules to prevent regulated crypto firms from offering services linked to stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA requirements.” Moulin’s speech singled out a payments use: non-euro stablecoins spent in everyday transactions.
Pontes tokens to settle tokenized commercial paper by end-2026
Moulin described a European response built on three pillars. The first is central bank money for the digital age: the digital euro project for the public and, for the interbank market, Pontes, which the Eurosystem launched on September 21, 2026, to settle wholesale transactions in tokenized assets in central bank money. An initial group of participants, including Caisse des Dépôts, Memo Bank, and Société Générale, had completed onboarding at launch, according to the ECB, which said a second project, Appia, aims to deliver a blueprint by 2028.
The second pillar is a European offering of tokenized commercial bank money: tokenized deposits, euro-backed stablecoins, and payment infrastructure for the multilateral clearing of those tokens. The Banque de France and the ACPR set up a strategic group on innovation and tokenization, the GSIT, in March 2026 with the AMF, the French Treasury, and private-sector firms. As part of that work, the Pythagore project, led by the Banque de France and Euroclear France, is set to use central bank tokens supplied through Pontes to settle tokenized NEU CP, the French short-term commercial paper, by the end of 2026.
The third pillar is regulatory. The DLT Pilot Regime, which has applied since March 23, 2023, provides the legal framework for trading and settling crypto-assets that qualify as financial instruments. ESMA lists its instrument caps: shares with a market capitalization below €500 million, bonds with an issuance size below €1 billion, and UCITS funds with less than €500 million in assets. ESMA says the regime was set to run for at least three years, with a possible extension by the Commission, and, if successful, could be made permanent by amending EU financial services law. The speech did not say which limits the €300 billion figure would replace.
ACPR to supervise high-risk AI from December 2027
Artificial intelligence was the second of three challenges Moulin set out for the coming decade, after tokenization and before geopolitical fragmentation. Close to 80% of French fintechs use AI, he said, citing France FinTech. In finance, the EU AI Act’s high-risk category includes systems used for granting credit, assessing risk, and pricing insurance, Moulin noted, and the ACPR will supervise them from December 2027. Moulin added that “our regulatory framework is probably insufficient to address the risks posed by the most advanced AI models.”
He put the French sector at more than 1,200 companies and close to 55,000 jobs, including 15 unicorns, citing France FinTech’s September 2026 panorama. Citing figures from the French fintech observatory, Moulin said fundraising rose 51% year on year in the first half of 2026, underpinned by a few major deals. “This encouraging trend remains fragile,” he said, adding that the ecosystem needs more equity capital, particularly from European investors.
Nothing changes in the law today. The Commission’s consultation document says the responses will guide it “when preparing, if considered appropriate, a formal Commission proposal.” Any amendment to MiCA would then need the approval of the European Parliament and the Council.