EU Council Backs a Wider DLT Pilot and ESMA Oversight of Only the Significant CASPs: What 9 October Means for Tokenized Securities

On 9 October 2026 the EU finance ministers agreed the key elements of the Council’s position on the market integration and supervision package. For anyone tokenizing securities, two parts matter: the DLT Pilot Regime is to grow from a sandbox into a wider lane, and ESMA would supervise only the most significant crypto platforms, not all of them.

Nothing here is law yet. The Council has set out its side of a negotiation that Parliament has not started. But the direction is now public: a larger regulated lane for tokenized financial instruments, supervised from the centre, and a national perimeter left for everyone below the line. This article reads what the Council published, sets it against the Commission’s proposal and today’s rules, says plainly what is still unknown, and ends with our view of where to build. Our opinions are marked as ours; everything else carries a source.

Written on 9 October 2026, the day of the Council announcement. Parts of this article describe proposals and negotiating positions, not law. General information, not legal advice.

What the Council said, and what it did not

The Council’s press release of 9 October 2026 says ministers agreed on the key elements of their negotiating position on the market integration and supervision package (MISP). Four points matter here.

1. It is a negotiating position, not a law. The text “will now be finalised” ahead of formal Council adoption. Talks with the European Parliament can begin once Parliament adopts its own position.
2. ESMA supervision of crypto platforms is narrowed. Only the most significant cross-border crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) would immediately fall under ESMA, in place of the blanket regime the Commission proposed.
3. The DLT Pilot is to be improved and widened. The Council’s position broadens the level of financial activity that can run through the pilot, to encourage take-up.
4. There is a political clock. The package sits inside the “One Europe, One Market” agenda that leaders launched in March 2026, to be implemented in 2026 where possible and by the end of 2027 at the latest. Leaders review progress on 15 and 16 October.

What the release does not give is as useful. It states no number for the DLT Pilot’s ceiling. It does not define “most significant” for CASPs: no threshold, no metric, no date. Both were open questions in the Council’s own June progress report, and the public text does not close them. Until the full position is published, any figure attached to the Council’s stance is a guess. We do not give one.

One more item from the same day sits next to the package. The Council formally appointed Carlo Comporti as chair of ESMA from 1 November 2026, for five years, renewable once. He is a CONSOB commissioner and sits on ESMA’s board of supervisors and management board. If the package passes in anything like this shape, he will build ESMA’s new direct-supervision role.

The package in sixty seconds

MISP is the Commission’s proposal of 4 December 2025: three legislative proposals, a master regulation, a master directive and a new settlement finality regulation. The one that touches the DLT Pilot and MiCA is COM(2025) 943 (procedure 2025/0383(COD)), which amends the DLT Pilot Regulation (EU) 2022/858 and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, among others.

The core idea is to move supervision of the most important market infrastructure from national authorities to ESMA. In the Council’s position this covers the most significant cross-border trading venues and the most significant post-trading entities: central securities depositories (CSDs) and central counterparties (CCPs). A new pan-European market operator status would let a venue run several venues across the EU under one licence, voluntarily, supervised by ESMA. ESMA’s own governance changes too: a full-time executive board of a chair and five independent members, beside a board of supervisors of national authorities that stays the main body for regulatory decisions. The transition is two years.

The stated reason is scale. The Council estimates EUR 10 trillion of household savings sit in low-yield bank deposits while EU capital markets stay fragmented along national lines. That is why the DLT part of the package is framed as market structure, not as a concession to crypto.

The DLT Pilot: from sandbox to market structure

Where it stands today

The Pilot has applied since 23 March 2023. It lets three kinds of infrastructure operate under a specific permission with temporary exemptions from rules written for non-DLT systems: a DLT multilateral trading facility, a DLT settlement system and a combined trading and settlement system. ESMA’s page lists the instrument limits: shares of issuers below EUR 500 million market capitalisation, bonds below EUR 1 billion issue size, fund units below EUR 500 million assets under management. On top sits an aggregate cap of EUR 6 billion on what one venue may hold.

ESMA’s June 2025 report counted three authorised infrastructures (CSD Prague, 21X and 360X) at its cut-off, found minimal live trading, and recommended recalibrating the thresholds and clarifying the regime’s long-term status. We did not recheck the current list for this article; an operator planning around a venue should open ESMA’s list directly.

What the Commission proposed, and what the Council has said

The Commission’s Q&A of 4 December 2025 is the clearest statement of the design. Set beside today’s law and the Council’s public text:

The last row is the one most commentary skips. The Q&A explains why it exists: the benefits of distributed ledgers may be particularly salient where key roles in the post-trade chain are spread across several regulated entities on a common platform, “in accordance with pre-agreed standards and protocols”. That describes a shared, standards-governed ledger, not one operator’s sandbox.

Our reading. The ceiling is the headline but not the story. A venue ceiling constrains a market that exists, and three venues with minimal trading do not test one. What held the Pilot back was the narrow instrument list, the time limits on permissions, the cost of exemptions for a small operator, and nothing to settle against. The proposal attacks those directly: more instruments, permanence, a proportionate regime, and central bank money. If the Council keeps even most of it, the Pilot changes from a place to run an experiment into a licence category that a bank or a CSD can build a business case on.

CASP supervision: one line, drawn somewhere new

The two versions

Under the Commission’s proposal, ESMA would authorise and supervise all CASPs. Its Q&A says it directly: “There is no split supervision for CASPs.” Firms that provide crypto services under another licence, such as investment firms or e-money institutions, would stay national unless crypto becomes their main activity, defined as more than half of turnover for two consecutive years; banks are excluded. The proposal also deletes Article 85 of MiCA, which today defines a significant CASP as one with at least 15 million active users in the EU on average over a calendar year. Supervision of CASPs is national today.

The Council narrows it: only the most significant cross-border CASPs fall under ESMA straight away. The Council’s June progress report records a majority for that approach and the unresolved points: the criteria, the metric (users in absolute terms or assets under custody), the measurement period, and market abuse supervision. The ECB’s April 2026 opinion and the Eurosystem’s September response engage with the same category. We have found no published numerical threshold for “significant” in any public Council document.

Who ends up where. A small number of large cross-border platforms would deal with ESMA directly, under one rulebook and one supervisor. Everyone else keeps the national authority that authorised them. That is more workable than a single supervisor for a regulator still building its team, but it creates a line, and lines attract behaviour. A platform near the line has reasons to stay under it or to cross it on purpose. We expect the criteria, not the principle, to be where argument concentrates over the winter.

What the timeline looks like

Our reading. Nothing in this package operates in 2026. A venue authorised under the widened Pilot is a 2028 event at the earliest on any realistic path. What does happen in 2026 and 2027 is preparation: operators and issuers deciding where to stand when the lane opens.

Our view: what this changes, and for whom

These are our judgements, drawn from the sources above. Treat them as hypotheses to test.

1. The Pilot becomes a licensing path with a business case. Permanence, a proportionate regime for small operators and central bank money settlement are what an operator needs before committing capital. This package is aimed at creating the market a ceiling would then limit.
2. The winners are regulated incumbents and the software beneath them. CSDs, exchanges and banks with central bank access are the natural holders of the new notary and account-keeper roles. They need a technology layer that issues, restricts and records tokenized instruments in a form a supervisor can read. A start-up is unlikely to become a CSD. It can become the layer a CSD buys.
3. The squeeze is on mid-size platforms. A CASP below the line keeps a national supervisor but faces competitors with one EU-wide rulebook. For an issuer using such a platform, the question shifts from “is it licensed” to “which perimeter does it sit in, and for how long”.
4. Identity and transfer restrictions become the load-bearing layer. The Commission itself describes several regulated entities on a common platform under “pre-agreed standards and protocols”. Standards for who may hold what, under which restrictions, become an interface between firms. This is where token standards for regulated assets stop being a developer preference.
5. A central supervisor wants evidence in a standard form. One rulebook for the largest platforms and venues pushes the market toward comparable records: what the instrument is, how it was classified, who the issuer is, what the restrictions are. Whoever holds clean records moves faster through any authorisation.

Where Stobox can build

We work with issuers on tokenization, from asset structuring through legal documentation and deployment, and have supported $305M+ in assets structured and supported. From that position, and from what we are building, we see three places to focus. None is a claim that a product meets a rule: the rules above are proposals.

What we will not do: become a trading venue, a depository or a CASP. Where a tokenized instrument may trade and settle is decided by the venue’s permission and the rules in force. Our role is to prepare the instrument, the record and the token layer so that when a licensed operator is ready, the issuer is.

What to do on Monday

If you are an issuer

1. Write down your instrument’s classification (MiCA or MiFID financial instrument) and the evidence for it.
2. Place the instrument against today’s Pilot limits: EUR 500 million for shares and fund units, EUR 1 billion for bonds. That tells you whether the current regime could admit you at all.
3. Do not plan on a venue under the new rules before 2028. Plan on today’s options and design the instrument to be portable.
4. Put classification, prospectus and governance questions in one file for counsel before the venue question gets answered.

If you run a CASP, or plan to

1. Establish your active-user count and your assets under custody on a calendar-year basis, so you know which side of any significance line you would sit on.
2. Read the Council’s full text when it is published, looking for the criteria, the metric, the measurement period and the review clause.
3. Do not assume the Commission’s “all CASPs to ESMA” model. It is not what the Council backed.

If you build infrastructure

1. Follow the notary and account-keeper roles. They are where banks and CSDs will buy technology.
2. Decide which token standard and identity model you will support, and write down why.

What we are watching

• Council
  Full text of the positionThe only place a DLT Pilot ceiling or a CASP significance criterion could appear. Watch the Council document register.
• Parliament
  ECON vote dateOpens the trilogue phase. Legislative Observatory, 2025/0383(COD).
• 15 – 16 Oct
  European Council conclusionsPossible political guidance on the timeline.
• 28 Oct
  ESMA workshop on tokenisationPublic statements from the regulator on the regime. Date from the ESMA event listing; check it before relying on it.
• 1 Nov
  New ESMA chair in officeSets the leadership for the supervisory build.

Sources and access dates

Read directly on 9 October 2026:

• Council of the EU, press release on the savings and investments union, 9 October 2026.
• Council of the EU, ECOFIN meeting page, 9 October 2026.
• Council of the EU, press release on the appointment of the ESMA chair, 9 October 2026.
• European Commission, Questions and answers on the market integration package, 4 December 2025, questions 40 to 45.
• ESMA, DLT Pilot Regime page.

Read on 1 October 2026 and not re-read on 9 October:

• Regulation (EU) 2022/858, the DLT Pilot Regulation, EUR-Lex.
• Commission proposal COM(2025) 943, 4 December 2025, EUR-Lex.
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Articles 85 and 93, EUR-Lex.
• Council document 10735/26, Cyprus Presidency progress report on MISP, 24 June 2026.
• ECB Opinion CON/2026/13, 9 April 2026.
• European Parliament Legislative Observatory, procedure 2025/0383(COD).
• Regulation Tomorrow, ECON draft reports on MISP, June 2026 (secondary source).

Logos identify the institutions discussed; no endorsement implied. This article is general information, not legal advice. Stobox works with issuers on tokenization; where a tokenized instrument can trade or settle is decided by the venue’s permission and the rules in force, not by Stobox. Rules and timelines described here may change; consult qualified counsel before acting.