EU Gains Power to Ban Entire Countries' Crypto Sectors from EU Operators

The European Union has acquired a new legal power to ban an entire country's cryptocurrency sector from transacting with European operators.

This ability, written into a new annex (Annex LVII) to EU Regulation 833/2014, was built specifically because the old approach, designating platforms one at a time, demonstrably failed.

Blockchain analytics firms documented how each exchange closure produced a successor, and the cumulative transaction volume moving through Russia-connected stablecoin infrastructure still crossed more than $110 billion in cumulative on-chain transactions before the latest round of enforcement hit.

The new authority allows the EU to ban any transaction between an EU operator and any crypto-asset service provider operating in a third-country jurisdiction listed in the annex, which is currently unpopulated, no countries have yet been listed.

This tool was designed specifically to combat the use of stablecoins like A7A5, which was deliberately engineered without a freeze function. As a result, only shutting down every platform where it can be exchanged for something else would stop it from trading.