Headline: 39 financial giants demand emergency fast-track for Europe’s blockchain pilot to avoid falling behind U.S.
A coalition of 39 financial and tech firms — including Boerse Stuttgart Group, Nasdaq and several European fintech associations — has urged EU lawmakers to fast-track changes to the bloc’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) pilot regime. In a joint letter to the European Commission and Parliament, the group warns that keeping the pilot tied to a larger legislative package risks years of delay and could leave Europe trailing the U.S. in the race to digitize financial markets.
The DLT pilot, operating since 2023, lets firms test tokenized versions of traditional assets such as shares and bonds on blockchain networks to explore new models for trading and settlement. Today the pilot sits inside a package of 18 finance-related laws that are moving through the EU’s legislative process — a bundle industry participants say could take too long to finalize.
Signatories argue the DLT rules should be unbundled and updated quickly on their own. They’ve proposed a set of practical adjustments intended to move the pilot from limited experiments toward real, scalable markets: broaden the scope of eligible assets, raise the transaction cap to €150 billion ($176 billion), and remove expiry dates on specialist DLT licenses so projects can grow beyond temporary trials.
Supporters say those changes would let firms build substantive, long-term marketplaces instead of constrained pilots. Their push comes as the U.S. is also shaping crypto-friendly frameworks — including the so-called Genius Act — to bring tokenized finance further into mainstream markets, heightening competitive pressure on Europe.
The European Commission, however, has indicated a preference for passing the entire legislative package together as part of a wider plan to steer household savings into investment. Lawmakers now face a choice: accelerate a stand-alone DLT update to fast-track tokenization infrastructure, or keep the pilot locked to a broader, slower reform agenda. The decision will likely shape whether Europe becomes a leader or a laggard in regulated digital finance.
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