The French Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the Italian Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) jointly submitted recommendations to the European Commission on Wednesday, proposing adjustments to how blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) is regulated across European financial markets.
The program was intended to provide a legal environment for testing blockchain-based systems for trading, settlement, and custody of financial instruments.
The recommendations followed the underwhelming performance of the EU’s Pilot Regime, introduced in March 2023 to guide the use of DLT in financial market infrastructure.
The AMF and CONSOB have urged the European Commission and co-legislators to adjust the framework to better support market testing and development.
Despite risinginterest in DLT, participation in the Pilot Regime remained low, with limited adoption and missed objectives.
They believe this would lower barriers for firms seeking to experiment with DLT applications.
The regulators outlined three key areas for improvement.
“At a time when Europe wishes to develop its financial markets to meet its financing needs with the Savings and Investment Union, it is clearly a priority that Europe puts in place a competitive framework to encourage innovation, and market testing of distributed ledger technology, in order to better measure the potential benefits,” said Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, AMF Chair.
This would allow for the inclusion of a wider range of financial products, including structured bonds and derivatives.
Second, the AMF and CONSOB proposed broadening the scope of the Pilot Regime by raising eligibility and capitalisation limits to accommodate larger-scale projects.
They also emphasized the importance of enhancing the role of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to ensure consistent implementation across the EU.
In March 2025, the Boerse Stuttgart Group launched the first Swiss market for trading digital securities via blockchain.
While AMF and CONSOB push for regulatory improvements, other European institutions are already advancing DLT initiatives at the national level.
The platform supports secondary market trading of tokenized assets such as stocks, bonds, and funds on Ethereum.
Integration with the Swiss payment infrastructure is expected to attract further participation from banks and financial institutions, driving the tokenization of traditional assets.
BX Digital, its subsidiary, has received authorization from FINMA to operate a DLT trading system.