FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: Hubert de Vauplane and Hugo Bordet, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP
lations relating to MiCAR are still awaited from the European Commission. In France, regulators are already leading the way in processing approval applications in accordance with MiCAR. On 1 July 2024, the AMF launched a pre-application process under MiCAR, enabling DASPs to convert their PACTE applications into applications for CASP licens - ing. On 15 October 2024, an order was pub - lished to transpose the provisions of MiCAR into the French Monetary and Financial Code. The AMF’s General Regulations and other non-bind - ing documentation are also being updated as part of the implementation of MiCAR in France. To date, no entity has been formally licensed as a CASP by the AMF under the MiCAR regime. However, several entities have been approved by the ACPR for the issuance of e-money tokens, including Circle, Société Générale Forge and Salvus, which were among the first institu - tions to receive their electronic money institution licences for issuing EMTs in France. In parallel to MiCAR and the Digital Finance Pack - age, the sixth anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) Directive is expected to be adopted ( “AML 6” ), together with a regulation establishing an EU AML authority, a regulation on AML/CFT regarding customer due diligence and beneficial ownership, as well as an amendment to the 2015 Regulation on Transfers of Funds to include aspects related to crypto- assets. In December 2024, the Financial Data Access (FiDA) Regulation was adopted. This regulation establishes a new framework expanding access to financial data to develop new services. If adopted, this regulatory framework is expected
to foster partnership opportunities between leg - acy players and fintechs. CBDC Experiments The BdF’s experiments with central bank digital currency (CBDC) are continuing. On 8 November 2021, the BdF published a report on its wholesale CBDC experiments. The BdF concludes that a wholesale CBDC could help ensure the safe development of tokenised financial markets by preserving the key role of central bank money. Furthermore, a wholesale CBDC could help improve cross-border and cross-currency payments. In September 2022, the BdF held a conference on the role of central banks in relation to the tokenisation of finance. In February 2023, the governor of the BdF gave a speech in which he confirmed that the BdF is involved in discussions on the possibility to implement a retail CBDC – in contrast to the original focus on a wholesale CBDC. More recently, in June 2024, the BdF announced that it had teamed up with the Hong Kong Mon - etary Authority to explore the cross-border inter - operability of their respective CBDC infrastruc - tures, focusing on real-time transactions and multi-currency payments. At the request of the management company Ofi Invest AM and the insurance group Generali France, Société Générale participated from April to November 2024 in projects led by the BdF and the European Central Bank concerning the use of a wholesale CBDC for the settlement of financial transactions involving tokenised secu - rities (security tokens). The main objective of the experiment was to investigate DvP (deliv -
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