On 24 November 2021, the European Parliament announced that it had reached agreement with the Council on a pilot scheme based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). The project follows the ‘sandbox’ approach, allowing for temporary derogations from certain requirements under the EU’s financial services legislation.

Among other things the Parliament’s announcement mentions that negotiators have sought to balance innovation whilst preserving financial stability. They have decided that financial instruments services provided using the DLT market should be limited and subject to value thresholds, as follows:

• Shares (500 million euro).
• Bonds (1 billion euro).
• Corporate bonds (200 million euro).
• Units of collective investment undertakings (UCITS) (500 million euro).

Additionally, operators of DLT can admit new financial instruments only until their total market value reaches 6 billion euro.