Overview
- The ECB, European Commission and ESMA announced the European Tokenisation Standards Group and opened nominations on Monday, November 9, 2026, with applications accepted through November 27.
- The ETSG will be led by industry representatives with the three authorities as permanent observers and is due to begin work in January 2027 with first standards targeted for early 2028.
- Its mandate is to draft common technical and market rules for holding, transferring and settling tokenised securities across different distributed ledger platforms and legacy financial infrastructure.
- Membership is open to European banks, fintechs, industry associations, custodians and blockchain providers that can show relevant experience and capacity, and the authorities will jointly assess and give feedback on applications.
- The standards are voluntary at launch but the group will design implementation monitoring and may recommend measures for regulators to encourage uptake, a step that could lower frictions in cross-platform settlement and speed broader market use of tokenised assets.