EU financial regulators list AI and tokenization as regulatory priorities for 2027.

According to CoinDesk, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced it will designate artificial intelligence (AI) and tokenization technologies as new regulatory priorities beginning in 2027, focusing on their use in the core client-facing operations of regulated entities rather than confining scrutiny to back-office functions. Titled "Innovation and Investor Protection," the initiative aims to strengthen regulators' technological oversight capacity and ensure firms have robust governance frameworks and client safeguarding measures. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced plans this week to allocate a portion of its reserves to tokenized securities and to launch a new wholesale platform, Pontes, linking distributed ledger technology (DLT) market infrastructure with traditional payment systems. The EU is now transitioning from the rule-making stage of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework toward substantive reviews of tokenized finance and the wider application of AI across the securities sector.