Europe's Central Banks Tell Brussels to Widen the Stablecoin Interest Ban and Close the DeFi Gap

The European System of Central Banks, the ECB together with the 27 national central banks, published its response to the European Commission's targeted consultation on the MiCA review on 22 September. It arrives eight days before the consultation closes on 30 September, and it is the most consequential submission made public so far.

Four positions matter for firms inside the perimeter.

The remuneration ban should widen. The ESCB supports keeping the prohibition on CASPs paying remuneration on stablecoins, and argues it should reach beyond services already regulated under MiCA to cover crypto lending, borrowing and staking. The reasoning is that these products reproduce the economic effect of paying interest through channels the prohibition does not currently touch. The response describes maintaining and strengthening the ban, across direct and indirect forms of remuneration, as a legislative priority. The underlying concern is the boundary between electronic money and bank deposits, and the level playing field across the EU financial system.

Reserve composition should change. The central banks want MiCA's bank-deposit thresholds for reserve assets, 30% for e-money tokens and 60% for significant tokens, replaced with liquidity-based requirements keyed to assets maturing within one and five working days. Their argument is that a fixed deposit quota ties issuers to individual credit institutions and can destabilise bank funding, since issuer deposits behave less predictably than retail deposits and must be withdrawn quickly during a redemption run.

Staking, lending and borrowing should be regulated at Union level. Where a firm accepts a client's crypto-assets and undertakes to return them, potentially with a premium, the ESCB argues the arrangement can be comparable to taking repayable funds in the banking sense. That framing matters well beyond stablecoins.

The decentralisation exemption needs a definition. MiCA exempts fully decentralised services and never defines the term. The ESCB points to research indicating that full decentralisation is rarely achieved in practice, which leaves the question of who exercises control unresolved. This is the same gap the Commission put to respondents directly, and the central banks have now placed a position on it.

The response also backs moving CASP licensing and supervision from national competent authorities to ESMA, raises the absence of a legal basis for issuing the same stablecoin inside and outside the EU, and states that supervisors face material challenges enforcing MiCA against firms that continue to reach EU customers without authorisation.

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Pontes goes live

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on 21 September, a platform that lets eligible banks and market infrastructure providers settle wholesale tokenised-asset transactions in central bank money, an alternative to relying on stablecoins or tokenised commercial-bank deposits for that purpose. "The Eurosystem is working to enable a more integrated, innovative and resilient European financial market in the digital age," said ECB President Christine Lagarde. Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenised finance ecosystem.

Thirteen market participants have completed onboarding, including Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, the European Investment Bank, KfW, DZ Bank and Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, alongside four market DLT operators: Axiology, Cashlink, Clearstream and SWIAT. The Deutsche Bundesbank has onboarded in a market participant capacity. Pontes links market DLT platforms to the Eurosystem's TARGET Services and will expand gradually, with full implementation expected by 2028. It sits alongside Appia, the longer-term initiative involving Danmarks Nationalbank, due to deliver a blueprint by 2028. In a separate release the same day, the ECB said it will invest part of its own funds in tokenised securities, with settlement via Pontes.

The sequencing is worth noting. The Eurosystem launched its own settlement infrastructure on Monday and filed its case for tightening the private alternatives on Tuesday.

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Also this week

The Wall Street Journal reported on 18 September that ECB President Christine Lagarde contacted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over Binance's MiCA application, and that a Hellenic Capital Market Commission vice chair told Binance the regulator could not proceed without the prime minister's support. The account is contested. An ECB spokesperson declined to comment, and the ECB has no institutional role in authorising CASPs. An HCMC spokesperson said the comments attributed to its officers were not made and that the application was assessed independently. An adviser to Greece's finance minister said the government did not intervene. Binance withdrew the Greek application on 24 June and said it would not comment on speculation.

What to watch: whether industry submissions before 30 September engage the ESCB's decentralisation argument directly, since the Commission now has a central bank position on the record and comparatively little published counterweight from the sector.

For a current view of MiCA authorisations and white papers across the EU, our White Paper Tracker (micacryptoalliance.com/white-paper-tracker) draws directly on ESMA's registers.

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Sources:

European Central Bank, "Eurosystem brings central bank money to tokenised finance," 21 September 2026. Source for the Lagarde and Cipollone quotes, the participant and DLT operator list, the 2028 implementation date and the Appia description.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr260921~e754847a7b.en.html

European Central Bank, "ECB to invest part of own funds in tokenised securities, with settlement via Pontes," 21 September 2026.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr260921_1~5a011ecbea.en.html

ECB Pontes page, confirming the 21 September 2026 initial launch and the staged rollout.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/target/pontes/html/index.en.html

ECB Appia press release, 11 March 2026, linked from the Pontes release.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr260311~14ddf51a77.en.html

European Commission, targeted consultation on the review of the MiCA Regulation. Source for the 30 September deadline the ESCB response feeds into.
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/consultations-0/targeted-consultation-review-mica-regulation_en

The consultation document itself, 20 May 2026, which contains the DeFi and decentralisation questions the ESCB is answering.
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/document/download/62be7015-f066-4fac-b74e-71bacdbcc9f5_en?filename=2026-mica-review-targeted-consultation-document_en.pdf

CoinDesk on the remuneration ban extending to lending, borrowing and staking, and the reported page count:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/09/22/european-central-banks-push-to-expand-stablecoin-yield-ban-to-crypto-lending-and-staking

Euronews on the DeFi decentralisation argument, the repayable funds framing and support for moving supervision to ESMA:
https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/09/22/ecb-calls-for-tougher-eu-crypto-rules-and-wider-ban-on-stablecoin-interest

The Crypto Times on the reserve composition proposal and the one to five working day maturity buckets:
https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/09/22/ecb-eu-central-banks-urge-brussels-to-scrap-micas-60-stablecoin-deposit-rule/

Genfinity on the 30% and 60% thresholds and the Article 36 reference, which is the one I flagged as unverified:
https://genfinity.io/2026/09/22/ecb-eu-central-banks-scrap-mica-stablecoin-reserve-rule/

IndexBox on the synthetic CBDC concern and the multi-issuance point:
https://www.indexbox.io/blog/ecb-urges-rewrite-of-europes-crypto-rulebook-after-pontes-launch/

For the Binance passage: CoinDesk for the WSJ account, Crowdfund Insider for the HCMC and finance ministry responses, FinTelegram for the register check:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/09/18/ecb-president-christine-lagarde-intervened-to-block-binance-s-eu-mica-license-wsj