MISP moves into political negotiation: what more than 1,900 amendments mean for the EU’s future market architecture

RegCORE Client Alert | Capital Markets Union + Savings and Investment Union

QuickTake

More than 1,900 amendments have turned the Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP) from a legislative proposal into a contest between competing models for European market supervision and market infrastructure. The question for firms is no longer what MISP proposes. It is which of the competing architectures is becoming a credible landing zone for their business, their licences and their transactions — and which are negotiating positions unlikely to survive.

Three points follow. First, the Commission’s December 2025 proposal is no longer an adequate planning baseline. Second, the June rapporteur drafts are not a Parliament position and are themselves being challenged. Third, Council work is advancing in parallel and does not point in the same direction on the questions that matter most.

Our July 2026 Client Alert  examined the draft reports published on 11 June by Markus Ferber (EPP) on the MISP Master Regulation and Eero Heinäluoma (S&D) on the MISP Master Directive. Those reports marked the first substantive parliamentary response to the European Commission’s December 2025 proposals. Since then, the political negotiation has opened considerably.

ECON members have tabled 1,918 further amendments across the three principal MISP legislative files:

• Master Regulation – 2025/0383(COD): Ferber’s draft report is now supplemented by five amendment documents, PE791.103, PE791.134, PE791.135, PE791.136 and PE791.137, published on 31 July 2026 and covering amendments 201 to 1463 – 1,263 further amendments.
• Master Directive – 2025/0382(COD): Heinäluoma’s draft report is supplemented by PE791.083 and PE791.126, published on 27 July and covering amendments 102 to 647 – 546 further amendments.
• Settlement Finality Regulation (SFR) – 2025/0381(COD): Giovanni Crosetto’s draft report is supplemented by PE791.082, published on 20 July and containing amendments 34 to 142 – a further 109 amendments. 

That numerical scale should not be mistaken for legislative disorder. Grouped by subject — as mapped in the Annex to this Client Alert — a clearer picture emerges. The principal dispute is no longer whether the EU should integrate its capital markets or whether ESMA should acquire stronger powers; there is comparatively broad support for both. The disagreement concerns where European supervision should replace national supervision, where it should instead coordinate it, and what safeguards should accompany centralisation. That divide was already explicit in ECON’s 2 July debate. The Annex maps the competing outcomes so that firms can plan against a range rather than a single text.

This also changes the significance of the SFR. Our July Client Alert correctly noted that the SFR was a separate legislative file not covered by the two rapporteur reports analysed there. It can no longer sensibly be treated as peripheral. Crosetto has now proposed substantial changes to the Commission text, MEPs have tabled 109 further amendments and, on the Council side, a consolidated compromise text and consolidated legal drafting were already under discussion by early August.

The practical consequence is that firms should not plan against a single “Parliament position”. There is not yet one. Until ECON adopts its reports, the June documents remain rapporteur drafts and the tabled amendments remain tabled amendments rather than compromise text. The exercise this Client Alert undertakes is therefore to identify the credible landing zones between the Commission proposal, the three rapporteur drafts, the tabled ECON amendments and the emerging Council signal — and to translate each of them into supervisory, operational and transactional consequences.

Five developments that now matter most

1. Selective rather than universal ESMA centralisation. The Commission proposed direct ESMA supervision of significant CCPs, CSDs and trading venues and of all CASPs. Ferber’s draft would place all EU CCPs and CSDs under ESMA; Heinäluoma’s would extend direct supervision into significant asset-management groups and depositaries. The subsequent amendments run in both directions. Following the 10 July ECOFIN, the Council continues to frame the objective around significant CCPs, CSDs, trading venues and CASPs. What to consider now: model the significance-based outcome as the central case and the universal-transfer outcome as the stress case, and identify which entities sit near the boundary.
2. Significance is emerging as the organising principle. The Irish Presidency circulated a dedicated note on significance criteria on 13 July, and Council discussions on CSDs show Member States weighing supervisory colleges, joint supervisory teams and other structured arrangements as alternatives to an outright transfer of every function to ESMA. The negotiation is therefore shifting from a binary ESMA-versus-NCA choice towards the calibration of thresholds and the division of functions above them. What to consider now: significance criteria are the single variable with the widest effect on regulator identity, fees and inspection intensity — and, for acquirers, on the supervisory model a purchaser would actually inherit.
3. Asset management has become the clearest intra-Parliament fault line. Heinäluoma proposes direct ESMA authorisation and supervision of large EU asset-management groups, together with lower thresholds for enhanced scrutiny, direct powers over depositaries and a securities-lending revenue-return requirement. Ferber has publicly opposed the supervisory transfer on the basis that scale does not make a manager genuinely pan-European and that an additional ESMA layer may add cost without producing integration. The 546 amendments to the Master Directive therefore matter at least as much as the 1,263 to the Master Regulation. What to consider now: the substantive product rules — securities lending, delegation, intra-group resource sharing and depositary arrangements — could survive even if the supervisory transfer is moderated, and they bear directly on revenue and on the valuation of management and servicing platforms.
4. MiCAR is moving towards a different compromise from traditional infrastructure. The Commission proposed ESMA supervision of all CASPs. Ferber would confine that to significant CASPs while centralising MiCAR market-abuse enforcement at ESMA; Heinäluoma has argued publicly for stronger CASP supervision; and the Council also frames its work around significant CASPs. A significance-based CASP model is therefore a credible landing zone, although the criteria and the allocation of market-abuse powers remain open. What to consider now: for a scaling EU crypto business the significance threshold determines the identity of the licensing authority as the business grows — a diligence and business-plan question for investors as much as a compliance question.
5. DLT, CSDR and the SFR have become a single tokenised-infrastructure question. MISP is not only changing who supervises existing infrastructure; it is attempting to make the legal architecture capable of supporting tokenised securities, DLT market infrastructures and new forms of settlement. The Commission framed DLT reform as an objective of the Master Regulation and Directive; Ferber would turn the DLT Pilot into a more permanent and scalable regime; and Crosetto seeks technology-neutral settlement-finality rules. What to consider now: trading permissions and recording rules do not make a tokenised market scalable on their own. Whether tokenised infrastructure becomes institutionally investable depends on finality, insolvency protection and a credible route out of the Pilot Regime.

Two framing points complete the picture. The amendments to SFTR, the Benchmark Regulation, the STS Securitisation Regulation, the EuGB Regulation and the ESG Rating Regulation are described by the Commission as targeted alignment with the wider ESMA reforms; their real content therefore depends disproportionately on where the horizontal governance, enforcement, fee and data architecture lands. And the timetable is politically ambitious: ECON currently targets 1 December 2026 for adoption of its reports and decisions on entering interinstitutional negotiations, the Council committed on 10 July to seek a robust negotiating position by October, and the Commission’s One Europe, One Market roadmap continues to target agreement on MISP by the end of 2026.