MiCA's technical standards: the index that does not exist

Reference · European Union

MiCA does not work on its own. The Regulation empowers ESMAThe European Securities and Markets Authority — the EU-level supervisor that drafts most of MiCA's detailed rules and keeps its registers. It drafts; the Commission adopts. and the EBAThe European Banking Authority — ESMA's banking-side sibling, responsible for MiCA's stablecoin rulebook. It drafts; the Commission adopts. to write technical standards and guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law. filling in what it leaves at principle level, and a firm cannot answer "what must I actually do?" from the Level 1 text alone.

There is no consolidated public index of those measures. They arrive piecemeal — regulatory standards paired with implementing standards instrument by instrument, spread across ESMAThe European Securities and Markets Authority — the EU-level supervisor that drafts most of MiCA's detailed rules and keeps its registers. It drafts; the Commission adopts., the EBAThe European Banking Authority — ESMA's banking-side sibling, responsible for MiCA's stablecoin rulebook. It drafts; the Commission adopts. and the Commission, published on three different websites over two years. Practitioners assemble their own lists and those lists disagree.

This one is derived from the Regulation rather than compiled from other people's lists. Every row was found in the OJ text of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 and attributed to the article it sits in — and the derivation itself taught a lesson worth recording. A first pass searched for the standard empowering formulas and found 41. The true count is fifty, Articles 2 to 119, and the nine the formulas missed show why no compiled list agrees with any other: Article 119(8) says "draft regulatory standards" — without "technical", a drafting quirk in the OJ itself; Article 88(4)'s phrase happened to span a line break in the PDF; and seven guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law. mandates interpose clauses between the verb and its object — "ESMA shall, in close cooperation with EBA, issue guidelines".

In summary

• 50 empowerments: 26 regulatory technical standards, 10 implementing technical standards, 14 sets of guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law..
• The Level 2 framework is substantially complete — which the piecemeal publication hides. All 10 implementing technical standards and 24 of the 26 regulatory technical standards have been adopted by the Commission, every attributionA claim about who is behind an address. Never a ledger fact — always cite who made the claim and when. below verified on EUR-Lex against the instrument's own legal-basis recital.
• The only two unadopted standards are Articles 36 and 38 — liquidity requirements for, and eligible investments of, the asset-referenced token reserve. The register of authorised ARTAsset-referenced token — a crypto-asset claiming to hold a stable value by referencing anything other than exactly one official currency: a basket, gold, another asset. MiCA checks e-money tokens first; ART is the stablecoin residual (Title III). issuers is empty. The gap in the rulebook sits exactly where the market does not yet exist.
• Guidelines are different in kind. The 14 guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law. mandates are discharged by ESMAThe European Securities and Markets Authority — the EU-level supervisor that drafts most of MiCA's detailed rules and keeps its registers. It drafts; the Commission adopts. and the EBAThe European Banking Authority — ESMA's banking-side sibling, responsible for MiCA's stablecoin rulebook. It drafts; the Commission adopts. issuing them directly; they never become Commission regulations, so their status column reads differently by design.
• Seventeen of the empowerments carried MiCA's 30 June 2024 submission deadline. That dated the authorities' drafts, not the Commission's adoptions — which ran through to mid-2025.

How to read the two columns

The mandate columns — article, type, developer, subject, deadline — come from the Regulation. They are complete, in the sense that every empowerment in the text is here.

The adopted as column is weaker, and the index says so on its face rather than presenting a uniform table. It is assembled from the Commission's register of delegated and implementing acts and from the Official Journal. A blank does not mean "not adopted" — it means no adopted measure was identified here. Anyone who needs certainty on a specific standard should check EUR-Lex for that article before relying on a blank.

That asymmetry is the honest shape of the problem. It is also why building the index from the Regulation matters: the mandate list cannot drift, because it is fixed in the Level 1 text, whereas any list of adopted acts is a snapshot the moment it is written.

What the pattern shows

The white paper is the most heavily specified object in the Regulation — and one instrument can serve several mandates. Articles 6, 19 and 51 each carry a paired RTSRegulatory technical standard — detail an EU authority drafts and the European Commission adopts as a delegated regulation. Until adoption, scrutiny and publication it is a draft, not law. and ITSImplementing technical standard — the forms-and-procedures sibling of an RTS, adopted as an implementing regulation on a faster track without the scrutiny period. for the three white-paper regimes. On the adoption side the pairing collapses: a single implementing regulationA European Commission act setting uniform procedures or forms for applying EU law. No scrutiny period, so it can reach the Official Journal within days of adoption. (2024/2984) supplies the forms for all three, on the express basis of Articles 6(11), 19(10) and 51(10), and a single delegated regulationA European Commission act filling in detail a regulation empowered it to add. Parliament and Council get a scrutiny period before it can enter into force. (2025/422) covers the sustainability-indicator methodology for all three white papersThe disclosure document MiCA requires before most crypto-assets are offered to the public or admitted to trading — contents prescribed, liability attached, notified to the regulator. and the client disclosures under Article 66. Counting instruments therefore never reconciles with counting mandates, which is one reason practitioner lists disagree.

Authorisation is specified twice over. Article 18 for asset-referenced token issuers and Article 62 for crypto-asset service providers each carry an RTSRegulatory technical standard — detail an EU authority drafts and the European Commission adopts as a delegated regulation. Until adoption, scrutiny and publication it is a draft, not law. on the information required and an ITSImplementing technical standard — the forms-and-procedures sibling of an RTS, adopted as an implementing regulation on a faster track without the scrutiny period. on the forms. The application pack a practitioner assembles is shaped by those instruments, not by Article 62(2) alone.

Cooperation carries more standards than conduct. Articles 95, 96 and 107 — cooperation between competent authorities, with the European supervisory authorities, and with third countries — account for five empowerments. The supervisory plumbing was specified early and in detail.

The service-provider standards a CASP meets in an assessment are all adopted. Article 68 governance is served by two delegated regulationsA European Commission act filling in detail a regulation empowered it to add. Parliament and Council get a scrutiny period before it can enter into force. — continuity of services and record-keeping, both on the basis of Article 68(10). Article 76 trading platforms is served by two more: transparency data (2025/417) and order bookThe live list of buy and sell orders on a trading venue, by price and size. MiCA's record-keeping standards prescribe how a crypto trading platform must keep it. records (2025/416), both on Article 76(16). Article 92 market abuse and its STORA suspicious transaction or order report — what a platform files with its authority when trading looks like market abuse. The template is prescribed down to the fields. template were adopted as 2025/885, with the companion supervisory guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law. issued by ESMAThe European Securities and Markets Authority — the EU-level supervisor that drafts most of MiCA's detailed rules and keeps its registers. It drafts; the Commission adopts. in April 2025.

One row exists because a reader corrected this page. An earlier version stated that Article 76 had no adopted instrument. That was wrong — Delegated RegulationsA European Commission act filling in detail a regulation empowered it to add. Parliament and Council get a scrutiny period before it can enter into force. 2025/416 and 2025/417 had been in the Official Journal since February 2025 — and the error had a cause worth naming: this index trusted its own formula search, and the formula search was incomplete. The current version is verified instrument-by-instrument against EUR-Lex, and the extraction history is recorded in the data file so the failure mode travels with the dataset.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA) — the 50 empowerments, extracted from the live EUR-Lex text on 24 August 2026
• The adopted instruments on EUR-Lex — 25 delegated regulationsA European Commission act filling in detail a regulation empowered it to add. Parliament and Council get a scrutiny period before it can enter into force. carrying RTSRegulatory technical standard — detail an EU authority drafts and the European Commission adopts as a delegated regulation. Until adoption, scrutiny and publication it is a draft, not law. and 8 implementing regulationsA European Commission act setting uniform procedures or forms for applying EU law. No scrutiny period, so it can reach the Official Journal within days of adoption. carrying ITSImplementing technical standard — the forms-and-procedures sibling of an RTS, adopted as an implementing regulation on a faster track without the scrutiny period., e.g. 2025/416 and 2025/417 on trading platforms — each verified by its legal-basis recital
• European Commission — implementing and delegated acts under MiCA — the adoption status
• ESMA — MiCA policy documents and the EBAThe European Banking Authority — ESMA's banking-side sibling, responsible for MiCA's stablecoin rulebook. It drafts; the Commission adopts.'s MiCA pages, for the final reportsThe document in which ESMA or the EBA answers the consultation and hands its final draft to the Commission. The draft inside it is settled — but it is still not law. underlying each standard

Related: building the permission set and the application, phase by phase.

Correction, 24 August 2026. The first published version of this index stated 41 empowerments (25 RTSRegulatory technical standard — detail an EU authority drafts and the European Commission adopts as a delegated regulation. Until adoption, scrutiny and publication it is a draft, not law., 9 ITSImplementing technical standard — the forms-and-procedures sibling of an RTS, adopted as an implementing regulation on a faster track without the scrutiny period., 7 guidelinesA supervisory authority's published position on how rules should be applied. EU guidelines bind authorities on a comply-or-explain basis — they are not themselves the law.), identified nine adopted instruments, and said Article 76 had none. A reader pointed at Delegated RegulationsA European Commission act filling in detail a regulation empowered it to add. Parliament and Council get a scrutiny period before it can enter into force. 2025/416 and 2025/417, and the re-derivation that followed found nine mandates the formula search had missed and verified the full adoption picture: 50 empowerments, all 10 ITS and 24 of 26 RTS adopted.

Reference material, not legal advice. The mandate list is derived from the Regulation as at 24 August 2026; Commission-instrument attributions are verified by legal-basis recital. The information provided is for research and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.