EBA Presses Brussels to Expand Crypto Rulebook Scope

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is urging Brussels to expand the scope of its landmark crypto rulebook, MiCA, to cover lending activities and certain services tied to decentralized finance. According to the EBA, these activities have outgrown the current framework and now pose risks to consumers that regulators cannot properly monitor.

The watchdog's most concrete recommendation concerns crypto-asset lending, an activity that currently falls entirely outside MiCA's perimeter. The EBA wants the Commission to consider bringing it under regulatory oversight, specifically covering cases where crypto-asset service providers connect customers to decentralized lending protocols.

The authority frames the issue as one of consumer protection, arguing that borrowers and lenders in these arrangements receive little of the disclosure and safeguards that apply elsewhere in the financial market. The EBA also views multi-issuer stablecoin schemes operated by multiple issuers based outside the EU as carrying significant risk due to harder oversight coordination across jurisdictions.

The recommendations arrive as the bloc's stablecoin rules face broader scrutiny, with only 39 Electronic Money Tokens (EMTs) and no Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs) having been issued under MiCA as of September 1, 2026. The EBA is also pushing for a review of the reporting framework that applies to issuers and crypto-asset service providers, which it argues would give supervisors sharper tools for monitoring risk as the market evolves.