09-17-2025 
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- French securities regulator told Reuters they may not recognize licenses granted in other EU countries over what it considers to be the inconsistent application of the EU’s licensing rules.
- Under MiCA and EU law, licensing granted in one member state is typically considered valid across the Union under the ‘passporting’ model.
- Comments come at a time when the EU considers taking over some supervision of securities markets from national regulators.
France may try to block companies that are licensed in other European Union countries from operating in the country, according to comments made by the head of its securities regulator.
If true, it would be a strong move by France: companies operating in the EU’s single market are permitted to do business throughout the Union as long as they are licensed in at least one member jurisdiction. This practice is known as ‘passporting.’
“We do not exclude the possibility of refusing the EU passport,” head of the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani told Reuters.
“It’s very complex legally and not a very good signal for the single market – it’s a bit like the ‘atomic weapon’… but it’s still a possibility we hold in reserve.”
The move is said to be under consideration in response to what Barbat-Layani called ‘regulatory shopping,’ in which companies try “to find a weak link that will give them a licence with fewer requirements than the others.”
Indeed, while legislative directives from the EU are to be implemented by member states throughout the Union, in practice they have latitude in how the directives are implemented.
A prime example of this can be seen in the implementation of the much-heralded Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the EU’s comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. Comprehensive though it is, it allows member states to choose their own grandfathering period and largely leaves the question of tax up to their discretion.
However, licensing procedures are among the more rigid MiCA’s provisions and are set out in Article 62 of the legislation. It sets out what must be included in a licensing application. The key discretion afforded to member states is in how to deal with companies that are already licensed under a national regime: member states are permitted to construct their own ‘simplified’ procedure for those companies.It’s possible these are the kinds of firms Barbat-Layani is referring to, though she gives no examples in her conversation with Reuters.
There have been complaints that national regulators, despite MiCA’s rigid requirements, are not enforcing its provisions equally. Earlier this year, the European Securities Market Authority (ESMA) criticized Malta’s Financial Services Authority (MFSA) for inadequately assessing licensing applications.
The MFSA criticism has become part of a growing conversation around the role that national regulators should play in regulating digital assets in the EU. Though MiCA was designed to leave supervision up to local regulators, some member states, including France, have been pushing to shift responsibility to the ESMA.
Predictably, not all member states agree: two days after Bloomberg reported that the French securities regulator AMF would be open to ceding powers to Brussels, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg penned an op-ed in the Financial Times which advocated for a decentralized supervisory system which leverages the expertise of national authorities.
The comments by France’s AMF will likely bring this conversation to the fore among EU member states and offer a referendum on how successfully the EU-wide MiCA has been implemented so far.
Watch: Future-proof data governance with Pieter Den Dooven
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