Stefan Berger explains the reason behind the delay in MiCA voting

As the Plenary vote for the landmark Pan-European crypto legislation, Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), has been rescheduled from the end of 2022 to February 2023, Stefan Berger believes that to be a matter of technical necessity. 

Responding to Cointelegraph’s request for more info, Berger, a member of the European Parliament responsible for procedural handling of MiCa, explained that the delay has nothing to do with the legislation’s content:

“I view this as a purely technical necessity and not as a political move. I have no reason to believe that the support for the MiCA has changed in the European Parliament.”

According to Berger, the distance between MiCa’s successfully passing the trialogue negotiations in October and its final approval vote in February could be explained by “the enormous amount of work for the lawyer linguists, given the length of the legal text.”

On Oct. 10, during the trialogue stage, members of the parliamentary committee passed the crypto framework policy in a vote of 28 in favor and one against. Following legal and linguistic checks, Parliament approving the latest version of the text, and publication in the official EU journal, the crypto policies could go into effect starting in 2024.

Related: MiCA legislation good news for crypto players — Binance Europe VP

The European effort to finalize the comprehensive crypto framework is yet to meet the same motion in the United States. That is why in mid-October the European Commission’s financial services commissioner Mairead McGuinness emphasized that the regulatory efforts should take a global character.

Meanwhile, after several different bills on crypto in general and stablecoins, in particular, have been introduced to the public, the U.S. lawmakers’ discussion stalled. One of the possible reasons is the disagreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, especially regarding stablecoins.