EU Parliament Adopts Digital Asset Policy Paper, Urges Review of DeFi, Staking, and NFTs Beyond MiCA

EU lawmakers on Tuesday adopted a position paper on digital assets, outlining how the bloc should approach crypto regulation following the rollout of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework. According to Cointelegraph, the paper calls on the European Commission to assess whether decentralized finance (DeFi), crypto lending and borrowing, staking, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) should be brought more clearly within the EU’s regulatory perimeter. It also urges consistent application of MiCA across member states and cautions against national rules that could fragment the EU’s digital asset market. The vote makes the report, “Digital assets – challenges for the competitiveness and integrity of the European Union’s financial system,” the European Parliament’s formal policy position on digital assets, though it does not directly amend MiCA or create new legal obligations for crypto firms. The policy stance comes as MiCA’s transitional period ended on July 1, requiring crypto-asset service providers covered by the framework to obtain bloc-wide or national authorization to continue operating across the European Union. The report reflects ongoing debate in Brussels over digital asset activities that remain outside MiCA’s current scope. While MiCA established licensing and conduct rules for crypto-asset service providers and issuers of certain tokens, lawmakers have continued to discuss how the framework should treat DeFi, staking, lending, NFTs, and tokenized financial assets. The European Commission has already been reviewing whether MiCA should be expanded and, in May, opened a public consultation seeking feedback on potential changes, including whether additional crypto activities should be covered and whether MiCA’s restrictions on interest-bearing stablecoins should be revisited. The Parliament’s report also adopts a more supportive tone toward tokenization and euro-denominated stablecoins, arguing that digital assets could strengthen the competitiveness of EU financial markets if regulation is applied consistently across the bloc.