The European Commission’s Digital Finance Package Explained

New financial products. The platform economy and open finance. Crypto assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT). Digital finance transformation. These themes and buzz words – accelerated by the impacts of COVID-19 – have been at the heart of discussions in finance for a while now. The constant changes and developments in the sector call for stronger and more coherent regulation in the EU. 

In September 2020, the European Commission took the first steps in response to these calls by adopting the digital finance (DigFin) package. 

The purpose of the package is to support the digital transformation of the financial sector and the development and use of new financial products in the EU, while at the same time safeguard consumer rights and financial stability.

The DigFin package consists of the EU digital finance strategy for the next five years and three legislative proposals regarding digital operational resilience, markets in crypto-assets and a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on DLT as well as a proposal for a directive to amend certain EU rules regarding financial services. Along with the DigFin package, the Commission also adopted a retail payments strategy to strengthen and develop different payment solutions and innovations. 

In this article series, we will present each part of the DigFin package separately and seek to clarify their key objectives and impacts. 

Our first article outlines the priorities and actions of the digital finance strategy. Later we'll have a closer look on the digital operational resilience act (DORA), markets in crypto-assets and the retail payments strategy.