39 Finance Firms Tell the EU: Fast-Track DLT Reform or Lose the Tokenization Race to America

A coalition of 39 companies — including Nasdaq and Boerse Stuttgart — sent a formal letter to the European Commission in April 2026 demanding the EU carve its DLT Pilot Regime out of a broader legislative package and fix it as a standalone law. The argument: the US is issuing exemptions while Europe negotiates timelines.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice.

The Letter and Its Signatories

The letter was coordinated by Adan, the French crypto industry association, and signed by 39 financial services companies operating in European markets. Signatories include Nasdaq's European trading venues and Boerse Stuttgart, Germany's second-largest stock exchange. The letter was addressed to the European Commission and sent in April 2026.

The core demand: remove the DLT Pilot Regime from the Market Integration and Supervision (MISA) package — a broader piece of EU financial legislation — and legislate it as a standalone law with a faster track through the European Parliament.

What the Coalition Wants Changed

Beyond the legislative track, the 39-firm coalition has three specific regulatory asks:

• Raise the eligible asset volume cap to €150 billion. The current DLT Pilot Regime caps the total value of assets that can be issued or traded on DLT infrastructure at €6 billion per operator. The coalition argues this cap is too low to support institutional-scale adoption and should be increased to €150 billion.
• Expand eligible asset types. The current regime restricts which financial instruments can be issued on DLT. The coalition is pushing to expand the list to include a broader range of tokenized securities and financial products.
• Remove time limits on DLT licenses. Current DLT Pilot Regime licenses expire after three years. The coalition argues this creates uncertainty that deters long-term infrastructure investment and should be removed entirely.

The US Comparison

The letter's urgency is grounded in the US Securities and Exchange Commission's movement on tokenized securities infrastructure. The SEC announced an "innovation exemption" on May 16, 2026, allowing third-party platforms to list tokenized versions of public stocks without issuer consent. While the exemption has drawn criticism for fragmentation risk — covered in our analysis of SEC tokenized stock exemption fragmentation concerns — it represents regulatory movement that European firms lack equivalent to.

The coalition's framing is direct: one side is writing letters to legislative bodies, and the other is issuing exemptions. The direction of this race has a winner if Europe does not move faster.

Boerse Stuttgart's Parallel Build

The same month the coalition letter circulated, Boerse Stuttgart's tokenized settlement platform Seturion announced partnerships with Societe Generale, SG-Forge, and flatexDEGIRO — and filed a BaFin license application under the DLT Pilot Regime. The timing is not coincidental. The coalition's reform demands and Boerse Stuttgart's market positioning are part of the same institutional strategy: build the infrastructure while lobbying to remove the regulatory constraints that limit it.

For details on the Seturion build and its implications for European settlement infrastructure, see our full analysis of Seturion's pan-European blockchain settlement platform.

What the EU's Response Looks Like

As of May 2026, the European Commission has not publicly responded to the coalition letter or indicated a timeline for a standalone DLT Pilot Regime legislative track. The MISA package remains the current legislative vehicle. Whether the Commission moves to separate the DLT provisions will depend in part on political pressure from member states — Germany, France, and the Netherlands have the largest institutional stakeholders in the coalition.

The BIS Project Agorá validation, which involved the Bank of France representing the Eurosystem, provides additional external pressure. Central bank technical endorsement of tokenized wholesale settlement architecture makes continued slow-tracking of DLT regulatory reform harder to justify to finance ministers.