EBA and ESMA publish guidelines on suitability of management body members and shareholders for entities under MiCA

The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) today published joint guidelines on the suitability of members of the management body, and on the assessment of shareholders and members with qualifying holdings for issuers of asset reference tokens (ARTs) and crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), under the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA).

These two sets of guidelines are part of the EBA and ESMA‘s ongoing efforts to foster a transparent, secure, and well-regulated crypto-assets market, and complement the recently published governance package.

The first set of guidelines covers the presence of suitable management bodies within issuers of ARTs and CASPs, contributing to increase the trust in the financial system. Having robust governance arrangements in place will foster confidence in those assets and services, supporting the development of a healthy crypto-asset ecosystem.

It provides common criteria to assess the knowledge, skills, experience, reputation, honesty and integrity of members of the management body, as well as if they can commit sufficient time to perform their duties to ensure a sound management of these entities.

The second set of guidelines concerns the assessment of the suitability of shareholders or members with direct or indirect qualifying holdings in a supervised entity. This assessment is a key aspect of the gatekeeping function exercised by supervisory authorities, considering the significant influence that these persons may exercise on the management of the supervised entity. 

It equips competent authorities with a common methodology to assess the suitability of the shareholders and members with direct or indirect qualifying holdings for the purpose of granting authorisation as issuers of ARTs or as CASPs, and for carrying out the prudential assessment of proposed acquisitions.