France’s financial authorities have proposed clearer responsibilities for intermediaries connecting customers to decentralised finance, placing protocol checks and user safeguards at the centre of their recommendations for revising Europe’s crypto rules.
The French Treasury, AMF, Banque de France and ACPR published their joint position on Wednesday in response to the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA.
Their announcement calls for assigned intermediary responsibilities, due-diligence obligations and protocol certification. These are recommendations for a future framework, rather than new obligations already enacted across the European Union.
The access provider remains part of the service
The policy question is what responsibility a customer-facing business should have when it provides a route into a protocol run through software. Describing the underlying system as decentralised does not answer what the intermediary selected, checked or communicated to its customer.
For a user, an exchange interface can make an external service feel like another feature of the same platform. The technology operating underneath may have different controls, withdrawal conditions and failure risks.
A clearer framework could distinguish the risks inherent in a protocol from those created by how a business offers access to it. That distinction matters when deciding what information customers need and which party can realistically address a problem.
Certification would address another question: whether a protocol has been examined against defined criteria. It would not logically remove every vulnerability or guarantee the outcome of every transaction. The criteria, scope and responsibility for the examination would determine how useful such a system becomes.
Stablecoin safeguards are another part of the proposal
The authorities also seek stronger controls around non-compliant stablecoins and tokens issued in both the EU and other jurisdictions. Their proposed approach to cross-border issuance involves supervisory cooperation, equivalence and protection of reserves and redemption rights.
A token can circulate across borders more easily than legal claims can be enforced across them. For a holder, the practical question is which entity owes repayment and what happens if that entity or its reserve arrangements are outside the holder’s jurisdiction.
The French position also supports a stronger supervisory role for ESMA over significant crypto providers. The details of any future reform would determine how national and European oversight interact.
A consultation position, not a completed legal change
The publication is an input into the EU review. It does not establish that every recommendation will become law, that all DeFi activity is prohibited or that customers have acquired a new general guarantee against losses.
The jurisdictional boundary is relevant to our coverage of U.S. comments on DeFi and foreign-stablecoin rules. Both debates concern responsibilities around crypto services, but they involve different laws, agencies and stages of policymaking.
For platforms, the useful next step is to follow the Commission’s response and any resulting legislative text. For customers, the immediate lesson is narrower: the interface providing access, the protocol carrying out the transaction and the entity promising repayment can be different parts of the same financial journey.