What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: DNB and the AFM said Dutch law does not currently support natively digital securities, so tokenization is possible today only in limited form rather than through fully digital-native issuance; they also pointed to the European Commission’s proposed “28th regime” as a possible longer-term EU-level fix.
- Institutions involved: The main institutions are De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), the European Commission, and Dutch DLT venues that may need to rely on another EU member state’s legal framework.
- Regulatory/technical context: According to the article, the EU DLT Pilot Regime offers exemptions from market-infrastructure rules but does not determine the legal status of a token under national law; the story also notes that Germany, Luxembourg and France have already updated their laws to recognize distributed ledgers in securities record-keeping.
- What to watch next: Watch for any joint Dutch follow-up by government, regulators and market participants on legal reform, and for whether the Netherlands pursues a national legislative change or relies on an EU-level solution; no specific next milestone was identified.
Why it matters
If Dutch law is not updated, tokenized-securities activity and related market infrastructure may develop in jurisdictions with clearer legal recognition, weakening the Netherlands’ competitiveness in digital capital markets.
HKMA Relevance
Direct: Another central bank or monetary authority and market regulator are calling for a concrete legal change in tokenized securities infrastructure, an area within HKMA’s broader payments, settlement and tokenisation remit.