The European Central Bank published a technical working document accompanying ECB Opinion CON/2026/13 on the proposed EU “master regulation” to further develop capital market integration and supervision, setting out detailed drafting changes across ESMA governance, financial market infrastructure supervision, distributed ledger technology (DLT) regimes and crypto-asset rules. The ECB’s proposals would strengthen ESMA’s operational authority in cooperation arrangements by explicitly allowing ESMA to issue instructions to national authorities while clarifying this is without prejudice to relevant Treaty and Union-law independence provisions. It also calls for clearer allocation of responsibilities, governance and resourcing in such arrangements, and for ECB representation as a non-voting member on ESMA’s Board of Supervisors, alongside expanded participation rights for the ECB and relevant national central banks in internal committees and Executive Board deliberations where CCPs, CSDs, trading venues, crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) or banking groups are concerned. For central counterparties under EMIR, the ECB proposes expanding the “significant CCP” test to include interoperability arrangements, widening the set of “relevant authorities” to capture additional central bank and supervisory roles, and strengthening central bank of issue consultation by covering all decisions affecting key risk-control requirements even when taken under broader procedures. It also seeks to ensure central banks of issue can access CCP submissions and ESMA draft assessments and decisions, and would extend access to EMIR’s central database to the European Systemic Risk Board and relevant members of the European System of Central Banks for macroprudential purposes. For central securities depositories under the CSDR, the ECB proposes more prescriptive cooperation arrangements for significant CSDs, reinstating completeness checks and assessment-based workflows in authorisation and review processes, and requiring an authorisation process when a CSD proposes to provide core services using DLT. Across settlement and digital finance provisions, the ECB proposes tighter safeguards for e-money token use in wholesale settlement, including making acceptance of e-money tokens for CSD cash penalties optional via CSD rules, conditioning authorisation for e-money token settlement where tokenised central bank money is available on evidence that central bank money is not practical, and expanding risk controls on issuers, reserves, redemption, monitoring, contingency planning and non-fungibility with unregistered crypto-assets. For the DLT Pilot Regime, it proposes making ESMA’s role in exemptions binding on national authorities, clarifying when CSDR Title IV requirements should apply to DLT settlement models, and limiting the use of tokenised representations of cash to settlement-only purposes. In MiCAR-related amendments, the ECB proposes extending the prohibition on granting interest for asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens to any activity involving holders, mandating ESMA consultation with anti-money laundering authorities, shifting certain notification flows to ESMA for banks, and introducing more risk-sensitive CASP own-funds requirements using Investment Firms Regulation K-factors alongside supervisory add-ons and anti-double-counting measures. It also proposes replacing the planned deletion of MiCAR Article 85 with a new multi-criteria “significant CASP” regime with enhanced group-level governance, recovery planning and reporting, and broadening the “main activity” test for ESMA-led cross-sectoral supervision beyond turnover to include operational volumes and balance sheet metrics. Separately, the ECB recommends replacing references to the ECB’s euro foreign exchange reference rates in fine-related currency conversion provisions with references to an appropriate Benchmarks Regulation-compliant foreign exchange benchmark rate.

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