MiCA focus shifts from rulemaking to supervision, ESMA chair says

ESMA told the European Parliament’s economic committee that its focus under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) will shift in 2027 from rulemaking to supervision and convergence. Chair Verena Ross said the authority intends to strengthen coordination among national supervisors overseeing crypto asset service providers (CASPs) as MiCA implementation advances. The regulator’s 2027 work program identifies operational resilience, outsourcing risks and the requirement for firms to keep sufficient operations inside the bloc as central supervisory concerns. ESMA also flagged liquidity, reverse solicitation and asset classification among the areas it will monitor more closely. To support consistent oversight, ESMA plans to harmonize periodic reporting by CASPs to national regulators and to develop common risk indicators and supervisory dashboards. The authority will continue to advance MIDAS, its centralized market surveillance system for crypto, aiming to have the system’s first phase fully operational in 2027. ESMA noted it had outlined a second phase of MIDAS earlier in February and said the work program would add analytical features and expand the types of data collected, with a planned rollout in the fourth quarter subject to board approval. The agency also intends to feed supervisory lessons into the European Commission’s MiCA review, which is expected by June 2027, and prepare for any consequent legislative proposals.