2023-04-21 10:30:30
The European Parliament on Thursday approved the first EU rules to trace transfers of crypto-assets (like bitcoins or e-money tokens), prevent money laundering, as well as common rules on customer protection .
The text, the result of a compromise reached last year between negotiators from Parliament and the Council (Member States) gathered a very large majority: 529 votes for, 29 against and 14 abstentions.
“The world of crypto-assets is barely regulated, and criminals take advantage of this to operate in complete anonymity. We put an end to it: payments made using crypto-assets will be traceable, in line with the rules for traditional payments”, explained MEP Assita Kanko (ECR, N-VA), co-rapporteur for the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
Suspicious transactions may be blocked, as is already the case for any other financial transaction. The “travel rule” (¿travel rule¿), already existing in traditional finance, will also apply in the future to transfers of crypto-assets. This rule requires that information about the originator of the asset and its beneficiary travel with the transaction and be kept on both sides of the transfer.
The rules will also cover transactions over €1,000 made from so-called self-hosted wallets (a private user’s crypto-asset wallet) when interacting with hosted wallets operated by crypto-asset service providers. .
However, “a threshold of 1,000 euros, as for bank transfers, does not make much sense in the world of crypto, where it is often behind small amounts that major crimes are hidden. There are fundraisers by terrorists with amounts of around 100 euros and payments to child pornography sites of 10 or 20 euros,” says Assita Kanko.
The plenary also gave the green light to new common rules on the supervision, consumer protection and environmental safeguards of crypto-assets, including crypto-currencies (MiCA). In order to reduce the high carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies, the largest service providers will have to make their energy consumption public. And to combat the risks of money laundering, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) should set up a public register for non-compliant crypto-asset service providers who operate in the European Union without authorization.
The texts will still have to be officially approved by the Council, before their publication in the Official Journal of the EU. They will come into effect 20 days later.
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