On 5 December 2025, the European Commission imposed a €120 million fine on X (formerly Twitter) for breaches of transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA), citing deceptive design related to “verified” blue checkmarks, deficiencies in the advertising repository, and failures regarding researchers’ access to public data. For victims
The revision of the EU Victims’ Rights Directive announced on 10 December 2025 is presented as a major step forward for crime victims in Europe, just like the new PSR/PSD3 package is sold as a breakthrough for payment users. But for online investment fraud victims, the reform is a missed
The European Commission is preparing the Digital Fairness Act (DFA) to tackle manipulative online practices such as dark patterns, addictive design, subscription traps, profiling, influencer marketing, and misleading in-app purchases (adjusting existing rules and directives). Following the discussion of the Digital Fairness Act Consultation process, BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, has
On 3 December 2025, the Court of Appeal in The Hague granted the Dutch prosecutor’s request to stop the criminal prosecution of ING’s former CEO in the so-called “Houston” money-laundering case (ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2025:2436). From now on, it is clear: after almost a decade of debate around ING’s role in massive AML
When ten of Europe’s largest banks announce a joint venture to issue a new euro stablecoin, the industry celebrates it as innovation, digital sovereignty and a long-overdue counterweight to US players like Circle or Tether. This is the narrative surrounding Qivalis, the new Dutch company that aims to launch a
On 27 November 2025, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) granted KuCoin EU Exchange GmbH a a licence as a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) under the MiCA regime for CASPs (Title V MiCA). With this single administrative act, KuCoin obtains EU-wide passporting rights: from Vienna, it can now offer regulated
The Coin Center report “Tear Down this Walled Garden: American Values and Digital Identity” argues that our current AML/KYC identity system is expensive, privacy-invasive, and largely useless against real crime – and that open, decentralised digital identity built on cryptography and blockchains could do much better. Coin Center is a
On 27 November 2025, EU negotiators announced a political deal on the new Payment Services Regulation (PSR) and PSD3. The press releases promised a “historic step” against payment fraud, more protection from online scams and new liability rules for social media platforms. From the perspective of EFRI, and against
At EFRI, we are contacted almost daily by victims of online investment scams who have been pushed into “investing” in crypto assets. The pattern is always the same: first, victims are convinced to invest in crypto – they either buy crypto on the scammers’ instructions or transfer existing crypto assets
Last week we at EFRI wrote about the Digital Omnibus leak and warned that the European Commission was preparing a stealth attack on the GDPR Since then, two things have happened: The Commission has now officially published its Digital Omnibus proposal. noyb (Max Schrems’ organisation) has released a detailed legal
