Binance Faces EU Expulsion After Greece Denies MiCA License

Published by James Harris on June 16, 2026June 16, 2026

Greece’s capital markets regulator is preparing to deny Binance’s application for a MiCA license, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters, which would leave the world’s largest crypto exchange without a legal pathway to operate in any of the EU’s 27 member states after July 1.

Binance filed with Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission in January, a choice that looked unconventional from the start. Germany had granted more than 45 MiCA licenses by that point, the Netherlands had issued 22, and Greece had approved none. Co-CEO Richard Teng framed the decision around talent, safety, and expansion potential rather than regulatory track record, and the exchange set up a local holding company, Binary Greece, to anchor the effort. That calculation now looks like a significant miscalculation. The MiCA framework was designed to create a single passport across the bloc, but it also concentrated existential regulatory risk into a single national regulator’s hands, and Binance chose one of the least tested.

Competitors including Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and KuCoin have already secured MiCA approvals and can operate freely across the European Economic Area. Binance cannot.

With less than two weeks before the hard deadline, Binance’s options are narrow. An appeal or a fresh application through another member state’s regulator would almost certainly run past July 1, at which point the exchange’s existing national registrations in six European countries expire automatically under MiCA’s transition rules. France’s AMF had already flagged Binance among more than 90 firms operating without proper MiCA authorization, so the regulatory pressure predates this specific rejection. The practical consequence is a potential near-total suspension of EU operations for an exchange that has spent the past two years trying to rehabilitate its regulatory standing globally, following its 2023 settlement with U.S. authorities. A forced EU exit would hand licensed competitors a significant market share opportunity at exactly the moment institutional appetite for regulated crypto exposure is rising.

Greece’s position here carries its own irony: the country is simultaneously formalizing crypto taxation for the first time, proposing a 15% capital gains levy, which signals it wants crypto revenue flowing through its economy while its capital markets regulator may be blocking the continent’s largest exchange from operating there legally. Binance has said it will provide a further update before June 30, though Teng acknowledged in February he would “leave it to the EU to determine” whether approval arrives in time.