The European Securities and Markets Authority is moving its MiCA work from writing rules to policing how licensed crypto firms follow them, chair Verena Ross said Monday. ESMA's 2027 work program sets operational resilience, outsourcing and firms' EU presence as its top crypto supervisory priorities, while a market-surveillance system called MIDAS moves toward full operation.
ESMA will coordinate national regulators' supervision of crypto asset service providers (CASPs) in 2027 around operational resilience, outsourcing risks, liquidity, reverse solicitation and asset classification. Chair Verena Ross told the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs that ESMA's MiCA work had moved "from rulemaking towards supervision and convergence."
Supervision priorities target outsourcing and EU presence
Supervisors will watch whether CASPs keep sufficient operations inside the bloc rather than leaning on infrastructure based elsewhere. Firms remain responsible for their regulatory obligations when they hand operational functions to third parties, and outsourcing arrangements cannot prevent national regulators from carrying out their supervisory duties.
ESMA also plans to harmonize CASPs' periodic reporting to national regulators and promote common risk indicators and supervisory dashboards. The goal is convergence between national supervisors as MiCA keeps applying across different EU jurisdictions.
MIDAS surveillance system nears full rollout
ESMA is advancing MIDAS, its centralized system for monitoring potential crypto market abuse, and expects the system's first phase to be fully operational in 2027. A second phase, first disclosed in February, would add analytical features and expand the data available, with rollout scheduled for the fourth quarter subject to board approval.
Authorization gap persists after the transition deadline
The supervisory push follows the expiry of MiCA's final transition period on July 1. Only 281 of 1,343 crypto service providers operating across the European Economic Area had secured MiCA authorization after that deadline, leaving 1,062 firms without approval at the time.
Binance, for instance, was serving some EU customers through provisions including reverse solicitation after missing the July 1 licensing deadline and withdrawing its Greek application in June. ESMA has named reverse solicitation, which covers cases where an EU client initiates contact with a third-country firm on its own exclusive initiative, among its supervisory priorities for 2027.
ESMA plans to feed its supervisory findings into the European Commission's MiCA review, expected by June 2027, and prepare for any legislative proposal that follows.
Sources: Cointelegraph, crypto.news
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