Market Integration and Supervision Package

According to the factsheet of the Commission, EU stock market capitalization equals 73 percent of GDP, against 270 percent in the United States and 130 percent in the United Kingdom. The EU has more than 300 stock exchanges, and EU investment funds are on average five times smaller than US funds.

The Commission reads these figures as signs of a market split along national borders, in which each venue, central securities depository and fund follows partly different national rules and supervisors. The package addresses these splits in trading, post-trading, asset management and supervision.

For trading, the package creates the status of pan-European market operator, or PEMO, so that a group that runs trading venues in several member states can work under one license. For post-trading, central securities depositories under the CSDR get easier rules for services across borders, and settlement systems in different member states are to be linked more closely.

Settlement is also the subject of the move to T+1 settlement in October 2027, which runs in parallel with the package.

Asset managers are to sell funds across borders with fewer extra national requirements, through simpler use of the EU passport. Today a fund manager often adapts the same fund to the marketing rules of each member state in which it sells.

The package raises the limits of the DLT Pilot Regime, under which market infrastructures test the trading and settlement of tokenized securities. According to the EDFA and to law firms that summarized the proposal, the cap on the total market value of securities on such an infrastructure rises from 6 billion euros to up to 100 billion euros.

ESMA is to take over the direct supervision of significant crypto-asset service providers under MiCAR, as well as of significant trading venues and central securities depositories. A new Executive Board within ESMA would take these supervisory decisions.

Several directives in the package become regulations, which apply in every member state without national transposition and leave less room for different national rules. Law firms such as Bird & Bird, CMS, Arendt and Baker McKenzie expect the negotiations between Parliament and Council to last into 2027.

The European Digital Finance Association published an open letter on the package in March 2026 with proposals on the DLT Pilot Regime and MiCAR, and on 8 September 2026 it signed an industry recommendation on larger volumes under the pilot regime.

In Germany the Bundesverband für elektronische Wertpapiere answered the consultation on 13 February 2026 and joined an open letter on DLT notaries, the DLT Pilot Regime and MiCAR on 18 March 2026.