Today, the Assemblée Nationale (the French parliament’s lower house) is initiating a debate about a legal project introduced last June by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, which contains some relevant changes for the French regulatory framework with regard to crypto assets and ICOs, together with many proposals aimed at sustaining the development of “liberated companies that are better funded, more innovative and fairer.”
This innovation, stimulated by the Plan d’Action pour la Croissance et la Transformation des Entreprises (PACTE – Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation) would be an important step drawing France closer to the digital revolution revolving around blockchain and overcoming the gap which presently separates France from the small club of countries that have created a favorable environment for investment in fintech and blockchain industry.
In fact, France was never an early-starter in this field: For instance, the projects financed by ICOs promoted by companies based in France currently make up only a fraction of the ones which chose to set their headquarters in Switzerland or in tiny countries such as Singapore or Gibraltar (this last one is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom).
Article 26 of the new legal scheme, if approved by parliament, will modify the Financial and Monetary Code, introducing a definition for entities such as tokens (described in the law as “immaterial items, representing in digital form one or more rights, which could be issued, compiled, kept and transferred through a digital shared instrument, allowing to identify — directly or indirectly — its owner”) and ICO (“a public offer for tokens subscription, in whatever form”).
Besides, the modified code will offer to the émetteurs de jetons (literally, the tokens’ issuing entities — it’s very likely that the French administration will prefer this label rather than ICOs) the possibility of requiring a sort of ‘visa’ issued by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF, Financial Market Authority, the French regulator), certifying a set of requirements concerning transparency and diligence with regard to investors.
To obtain the AMF’s ‘license’ — which is, by the way, a voluntary process, not a legal requirement — a company proposing an ICO should produce a promotional document (aka a white paper) presenting contents that are “exact, clear, not misleading, which allow to understand the risks involved in the offer.” Besides checking the presale communication, the AMF would monitor the means which are to be implemented to guarantee the security and the transparency of the token issuing event and would monitor information about the results of the ICO and the creation of a secondary market for the tokens. The French press already disclosed some rumors about an amendment proposed by three MPs to extend the certification system to all the business activities dealing with crypto digital assets (“actifs numériques”) — i.e., exchanges, consultancies and intermediaries.