The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission have opened nominations for the European Tokenisation Standards Group (ETSG). The group will develop common market standards to facilitate settlement and holding of financial instruments across distributed ledger technology (DLT) infrastructures and between DLT and traditional systems, addressing fragmentation in Europe’s tokenised financial markets.
The group will build on existing market standards and establish a framework to monitor members’ implementation of the standards it agrees. It may also recommend measures for EU authorities to incentivise compliance. The initiative starts work on interoperability ahead of any adoption of proposed amendments to the DLT Pilot Regime, which envisage an industry group developing standards for settlement between DLT market infrastructures.
Industry participants will chair the group and develop standards by consensus, with the three authorities serving as permanent observers. Nominees must represent entities with a European presence and be able to commit their organisations to actions arising from the group’s work. Applications are due by November 27, 2026. Work is expected to begin in January 2027, with initial standards relevant to the Eurosystem’s Appia roadmap targeted for early 2028.