In the revived debate about centralising the supervision of EU markets and market actors in Europe, Verena Ross, Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), has set out a position calling for a differentiated approach, depending on the market sector.

The decisive criteria for centralised supervision should be whether the business model is „significantly pan-European“, said Ross at a recent ECB event. This might include stock exchanges, other market infrastructures such as central counterparties, or crypto service providers. In any case, she remarked that it is certainly not efficient that there are currently 27 different national frameworks for supervisory practices towards crypto providers.

There is currently an intensive discussion in the EU as to whether investment firms, custodians, clearing houses, trading platforms, and other players should continue to be supervised primarily at national level – or at European level. Closely related to this is the question of expanding ESMA's powers. There are different ideas about this. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner recently expressed scepticism about expanding ESMA's responsibilities, citing possible overlapping structures. France, on the other hand, is aggressively campaigning for a stronger ESMA, certainly as part of promoting Paris as a financial centre.

ESMA is currently trying to promote convergence for national supervisory practices, but is reaching its limits, Ross complained. New measures such as voluntary supervisory colleges allow closer cooperation between national authorities – but everything depends on their willingness to participate.

„There are limits to how far convergence can go,“ Ross emphasised. She countered the accusation that the ESMA debate was ultimately only about Paris's advantages in financial market competition, saying that „strengthening ESMA is not a strengthening of Paris, but of Europe.“ The authority will always cooperate with national supervisors, because ESMA does not want to forego their expertise through proximity to the players.