[author: Stephen Wallace]
On August 13, 2018, the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (“ECON“) published its draft report on the European Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on European crowdfunding service providers (“CSPs“). The report is available here.
The main headlines of the text are the following:
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The threshold for crowdfunding offers should be raised from €1,000,000 to €8,000,000;
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The Regulation can provide guidance for initial coin offerings (“ICOs“);
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Third country CSPs wanting to provide services across the EU should be allowed to, as long as they are authorized by third country National Competent Authorities (“NCAs“) and there are guarantees in place to ensure CSPs follow the same rules as CSPs with a European passport;
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The experience of NCAs on giving authorization and supervising crowdfunding platforms should be recognized and their role in the European framework should be enhanced; and
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Crowdfunding platforms often vary in level of complexity, so the Regulation could differentiate between platforms facilitating matching of investors and project owners on the one hand, and platforms that decide the pricing and packaging of offers on the other, by requiring different disclosure levels for each.
The next stage is that ECON will vote on the draft report and then it will be considered by Parliament in plenary.
