Study on national legal framework and obstacles for asset tokenisation in Member States

The Digital Finance Strategy sets out the objective to ensure a technology neutral and innovation friendly regulatory framework. The Study would contribute to the specific objective set out in the FISMA management plan to ensure that opportunities from digital technology are widely employed to implement a safe, competitive and inclusive digitalisation of financial services. While there is considerable uncertainty around the future of crypto asset markets, a significant number of financial institutions see considerable potential in the tokenisation of traditional assets, both financial and other assets.

The next Commission might therefore need to put a focus and possibly develop an asset tokenisation for the EU, which could possibly also be a project for cooperation with other services in the Commission. While with the DLT pilot the EU financial services regulation would not seem to be an obstacle, we understand from interactions with market participants and national authorities that there are a number of issues when it comes to national legislation in areas of private law and other aspects which may be standing in the way of asset tokenisation which the study should explore. This could then allow the Commission to follow up as part of possible future work on asset tokenisation.

Concretely, the study would consist of a legal analysis of how existing national rules in a sample of Member States would apply to and support or create obstacles for the tokenisation of assets (securities law, property law and smart contracts, in particular).