In July 2025, EDFA Board Member Karsten Wenzlaff represented our association at the Meeting with National Competent Authorities (NCAs) in Athens, held under the EU-SDFA framework. The gathering brought together supervisors from across Europe alongside representatives of ESMA, EBA, EIOPA, and the European Commission to address pressing issues in digital finance regulation.

A Strong Supervisory Presence

The event was attended by leading regulatory bodies from across the EU, including the Autoritatea de Supraveghere Financiară (Romania), BaFin (Germany), Bank of Greece, Bank of Italy, Bank of Lithuania, Central Bank of Cyprus, Central Bank of Ireland, CNMV Spain, Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, Financial Conduct Authority (UK), Fintech Hub Portugal/CMVM, Hellenic Capital Market Commission, Malta Financial Services Authority, National Bank of Belgium, National Bank of Slovakia, Polish Financial Supervision Authority, and the Romanian Central Bank.

Topics on the Agenda

Discussions centered around three major themes:

• Regulatory Sandboxes and Innovation Hubs – supervisors exchanged views on fostering safe experimentation environments for fintechs and financial innovators.
• Regulatory Sandboxes under the AI Act – with the Act now entering into force, participants explored how sandboxes will be implemented across Member States to encourage trustworthy AI adoption in financial services.
• Synthetic Data and the EU Digital Finance Portal – highlighting the role of synthetic datasets in testing and innovation, and the opportunities created by the European Commission’s EU Digital Finance Platform.

European Forum for Innovation Facilitators (EFIF) Forum

Karsten also underlined the work taking place within the European Forum for Innovation Facilitators (EFIF), which connects supervisors across the EU to share practices on innovation support tools. More information can be found on the EU Digital Finance Platform.

This engagement reflects EDFA’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that the perspectives of Europe’s fintech ecosystem are heard at the highest supervisory and regulatory levels.