The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said national regulators that find legacy exposures should require remediation as soon as possible and no later than three months after publication, or about Jan. 8, 2027.
The opinion gives national authorities discretion to allow firms that do not yet comply to provide strictly limited services needed for an orderly wind-down and to avoid harm to clients. Those services can include liquidation, conversion, withdrawal, transfer or safekeeping of existing holdings. They should be time-limited, clearly communicated to clients and closely supervised, and should not enable new acquisitions, promotion, active distribution or continued market availability.
Because national supervisors decide whether to allow such services, customers do not automatically get three months of continued service.
The opinion rests on Article 66(1) of MiCA, which requires providers to act in clients' best interests. In ESMA's view, providing any MiCA service involving a non-compliant stablecoin should give rise to a presumption that it is incompatible with that duty, whether or not the service constitutes an offer to the public or admission to trading. ESMA argued that providers cannot adequately mitigate the risks created by missing issuer-level safeguards, and that warnings, disclosures and client acknowledgments would not resolve those concerns.
The new opinion complements an earlier Jan. 17, 2025 ESMA statement that left mere custody and transfers open while restricting trading and other services that constituted public offers. It preserves that interpretation while adding expectations under providers' existing duties.
In a Sept. 30 response to the EC's consultation on the MiCA regulation review, ESMA had sought legislation prohibiting all licensable services involving non-compliant stablecoins, without specifying an implementation date or wind-down path for that proposal.