# Mihai Câmpan - Mind the Gap: MiCA and Romania's Path to July 2026.

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2026-09-09
- Duration: 18:30
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-Ckdd05ZFOjM
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckdd05ZFOjM

## Description

MiCA's transitional regime ended on 1st July 2026. Any CASP serving EU clients without a licence will be in breach of EU law. 
Yet Romania - once marketed as a "founder-friendly" entry point into the EU - still had no complete national authorization procedure, and its regulator has publicly admitted it lacks the capacity to deliver one in time. Mind the Gapunpacks the legislative vacuum, the administrative bottleneck, and the very real risks for crypto businesses operating under the assumption that AML registration equals MiCA compliance. Spoiler: It doesn't.

## Transcript

[music] [applause] [applause] >> Yeah, hello, hello. Uh, hi, I am Mihai Campan. I'm a senior associate at Maxima Associates. Um, here is our team and uh, first of all, before getting into the substance, uh, I want to tell you on behalf of whom I am speaking today. So, we are a law firm which almost two decades of experience in complex litigation and commercial disputes. Uh, we focused first on on the commercial side of the law, but the changes that came now in in the whole environment and the whole commercial environment made us to be connected to the artificial intelligence, to cryptocurrency or to smart contracts, which brings me here. So, uh, these are all information about the the law firm that we are and what we are doing. And I have a little problem with the slides. Yes. Uh, okay, so now what what I'm trying to do now here today with you is to talk about um, how Romania implemented MiCA and how Romania uh, made all the all the changes in the in the legislation to implement MiCA. So, Romania is the case study today. Uh, but uh, I will I will refer to other legislations as well. So, oh, here I am. Yeah, so, the title of the presentation is uh, mind the gap MiCA and Romania's path to July 2026. What are we are trying to do is to because in the public space on all over LinkedIn, are all are a lot of things going on in a lot of trends about Romania and being very friendly to Mika and to crypto. But, I would like to see or for us to see if that is true or not. So, firstly, I would like to I would like to start with this quote. I don't have an an author because it's all over LinkedIn. I saw it in the numerous ways, and it says that Romania just quietly become one of the most strategic jurisdictions for crypto firms in Europe. It's founder-friendly, it's fast, it's frictionless, and it gives full Mika access with just an AML compliant setup. It sounds amazing, right? Yeah, the the worst part or the the the bad part is that almost none of this is true. So, you are you are you are being sold this but with with no legal grounds and with no legal application. So, don't base on this. Now, moving forward, what is this talk about? First of all, I want to set the grounds very clear. I will be not talking about Mika. Mika is very clear. It has 149 articles, which are explained all over the internet in a lot of of comments. So, it's not about Mika. It's about what happens when the regulation is in full force. So, now we are this Mika regulation is in full force, but the countries are not ready to enforce it. This is the strange part here. Last year, when I was here, I told you or I started my talk telling that I don't know nothing about Mika and that I don't know nothing about smart contracts. It was a little bit of a clickbait. But, now I am sure that I know about Mika, I know about smart contracts, but I don't know how to how to enforce this and how to apply them. But I'm not sure I'm not I'm not alone. Nobody does because there are no rules. So, Romania, as I told you, is the case study here because everybody or a lot of of crypto developers come here to Romania because it's told we are told that it's very friend friendly, but I will say that it's not. So, and the the other thing that I want you to keep in mind is the deadline to comply to MiCA is in less than 9 weeks. So, now the dates that matter, the date the the whole date, the only date that matter is the 1st of July, 2026, where is the end of the MiCA transitional regime and when you have to be MiCA registered to have a a MiCA certificate in order to operate. So, it's very important from the start to to put the grounds clear here. If you file for MiCA, it's not enough. If your MiCA is pending to being approved, is not enough. So, until the 1st of July, you will have to get your registration because otherwise, you will you will not you will breach the EU legislation. This is very clear. The ESMA told us very very clear that if you're not MiCA approved in any European country, you will breach the law. So, the deadline it's for the hard license to to get that license not to be prepared. So, keep in mind 1st of July, write it down. Now, let's see what brought us here because we have to set the timeline for this. So, the timeline started in December 2024, when MiCA became fully applicable all over the European Union. What you have to to know what you have to have in mind is that this regulation MiCA, is a regulation, so it applies immediately to every state. But we have the we have the regulation. We we don't need to to make anything, but every state has to make its own rules in how to apply it, in who to apply it, and in how to get that licenses. Which give Which brings us to the 13th of March 2025, when Romania, through the government, uh adopts the the government emergency ordinance number 10 of 2025, where we speak about MiCA, we do some things, but not enough. I will get to this later, and I will tell you exactly what what what this this law did this law does. It's the only one now, and I can assure you it's not enough. Then we go to back to late 2025, where the ASF, which is the the organism designated by the by the GO 10 here to implement MiCA, drafts the secondary legislation. So, we have the draft. The secondary legislation is the one that is very important here because is the one that is telling us how to put in force MiCA. So, we have a draft, but it's not adopted until now. Which brings us to March 2026, which is I think the most important part of what I will be saying here. I will get to that later, but the ASF leadership came uh and told us that they are not prepared. So, the organism that is supposed to to apply this and is supposed to give you the MiCA legislation the MiCA registration here in Romania came publicly on the record and told us, "We are not prepared. We are not able to give you what is what you have to have to to operate." Today, in May 2026, so this law is not in force. We don't have the secondary legislation. We don't know how to apply MiCA. And then we we will get to the 1st of July, where nobody knows what will happen if the laws are not changing in Romania quickly. Now, I was telling you about the the the law act, because Romania adopted something. We put something into force. You will ask me, is isn't that enough? It's enough for some but parts, but it's not enough for the whole parts. So, here is here I I I told you uh briefly what that what this law what this ordinance does. So, what it does is that the old regime the old uh the old registration regime for the crypto assets was abolished. So, we are not is not in force now. We designated the ASF, which is the financial supervisory authority and the Bank of Romania to uh apply this and to enforce MiCA. And then we we brought the CAS under un- under AML, which is anti-money laundering program. What it didn't do is it didn't not create a complete MiCA authorization procedure. We know who has to create it, but it's not created until now. Uh the AS the ASF has the license. It was it has the capacity to do this, but I will get to to the point where we where they say that they are not prepared. Uh and uh they clarify the the secondary technical requirements. They say what it has to be in force. So, we we have the whole the whole uh picture, but we don't have that important piece of regulation, which has to be adopted and it's now pending somewhere. Now, the most important part is where the regulated regulator came and and spoke. This uh this guy here, Gabriel Ion of Romescu, which is the deputy chairman of the ASF, came came on the record publicly uh to talk about this. So, this is the guy that leads the team that has to put in force MiCA. And he said, "The legislative restrictions in recent years limit ASF ability to recruit qualified personnel." So, the lack of technical expertise can lead to delays in authorization process difficulties and delays in identifying abusive practices or systemic value. It sounds juridical, but let me translate it to you. It says that we are not prepared. The regulate that is supposed to license you does not know how. We don't have the procedures. We don't know what to do. We know that we have to do it. So, there are file there are a lot of files here now in Romania, which are pending because as I told you, they don't know how to how to enforce them. And and in that press conference as well, he told he told that maybe a lot of that apply applications are good. A lot of that applications are match all the all the criteria, but they don't know how they don't have the ability to do it. So, don't get fooled but by everything and everyone on LinkedIn because Romania is not friendly. We have a procedure we have a procedure that will you will will give you a registration, an ASF registration, but it's not MiCA. And it will breach the EU legislation. Moving forward, Romania is not alone. If we look in the European Union, if we look at Poland, the crypto assets market act, which is an act that has to put in force MiCA in Poland, has been voted twice by the president, which means that it it was denied twice by the president of Poland twice. So, it's not a complete act and it's not in force. If we look at It- Italy is in the same situation that Romania is in. They don't have that piece of legislation that tells them how to do it. They don't have the secondary legislation. If we look at Luxembourg, they are in a trial period, which will end July July 2026. So, they are filing, they are giving MiCA registrations, but they don't know what will do after that. So, Romania is a secondary where I told you that the secondary legislation is not in force. So, if you see here, a pattern emerges. Because this is what I was telling last year, and this is what I will be telling in force. MiCA is a very good act, it's a very ideal act. It's create It creates an ideal path, it creates an ideal world for for crypto security and for crypto assets to be to be developed and to be sold and to be to be taken into force, but it's too ideal maybe. And it's very very hard to be put in to be put into force. And if you see by April 2026, nearly 2 years after MiCA was in full force, only 40 CAS licensed all over the 27 states of the European Union. So, if I think that everybody here, every developer knows that maybe he maybe in the European Union, there are like thousands, maybe tens of thousands of crypto assets and of or of crypto products. And they are not licensed. Why? Because it's very very hard. But, enough diagnosis. Let's >> [laughter] >> Let's see what what we can do. Let's Let me tell you what you can do in order to be protected. So, the first one is to make a very a very sincere audit of your stat- status now. Because if you operated lawfully before Mika, you may be grandfathered. If you did not operate, uh it's very hard and you you should not even try to try to get the to get the Mika as a functioning business. Second one is to file now if you if you trust Romania or to migrate to other countries that uh give Mika legis- registrations because Mika registration is like a passport. It's It can be used in every every European Union country, but you have to get it. It's not important where you get it. It's important to have it until the 1st of July. Then is to if you don't have it by now, you should build your wind-down plan. It's not optional. Mika says it expressly that you have to have it. You have to know what you will do if you go, let's say like bankrupt, and if you have to give to give everything back, and if you if your your product fails. And now the fourth one, and I cannot stress this stress this enough. I put it there to be very in the middle of the slide to don't rely on the AML registration alone because if you will rely on that, if you will if you come to Romania, or if you're based here in Romania, and you will get your AML registration, which is a procedure that takes roughly 2 days, so it's very easy to get it. You will be maybe sure, but the cons- the consequences will be huge and catastrophical maybe because the European Union will come. The European Union will see that you don't have the Mika the Mika registration, and that will will think that will mean that you maybe get closed. You maybe get fined with huge fines, and you have to get give everything back. It will be very very very bad if you continue to operate after the 1st of July without a Mika registration. If you If you trust Romania, you can as you can as I told there at the five fifth place to track the ASF secondary regulation. It is now pending. It will be probably in force sooner or later. In my opinion, later than sooner, but maybe uh it will be before the first the 1st of July, but then the deadlines will be extremely short in order to comply to MiCA. In conclusion, uh regulation, as I said there, is only as strong as the institute institutions that enforce it. In Romania now, we have a lot of of fake news going on that we we have a loop there and that we have that we have a possibility to comply to the to the EU regulation, but this is not true. You have to You have to be very careful and you have to read very careful what we can offer because and what we cannot offer because MiCA, as I told you, was designed to harmonize, was designed to make a unique a unique field all over the European Union. But the national every nationality has to implement it and there is where that harmony goes goes away because if we have 27 states, we have 27 regimes, we have 27 legislations which will try to put in force MiCA in different ways. The European Union is not able to give us this because as the laws are now, every the European Union gives the rule and every country has to has to make sure that they have the ability to apply it. So, uh this harmony, this ideal place where we can safely deal with crypto assets, it's not that harmonious and it's not it's not that that good as it's sold as it is sold on LinkedIn. And the fine the the founder-friendly jurisdiction narrative, yeah, it it's very very good it's very it sounds good, but it's not true. And don't get fooled by that because uh I was asked a few days ago about this and I thought I see that it's a very they they the guys trust what that's what that LinkedIn post said because there are there are made by some sort of specialists. And everybody trusts that Romania is somehow making a very a very good thing for the developers and they give give them loophole, but we don't. And the consequences can be very very very um bad because of this vacuum, but this legislative vacuum, but it will be it will close on the 1st of July. So, please, I tell you as friendly as I can, mind the gap. >> [music] [applause]