Is There Enough Sand in the Sandbox?

In the realm of rapidly advancing technologies, regulatory sandboxes have emerged as a promising solution to the regulatory challenges facing the FinTech industry. As a notable example of soft law, regulatory sandboxes offer a more adaptable framework for managing complex financial technologies. However, though the years their implementation across the EU has revealed several shortcomings. Furthermore, despite the intention to utilize regulatory sandboxes for AI regulation across the EU, there has never been a genuine effort to evaluate their effectiveness. This paper aims to measure the efficiency of current EU regulatory sandboxes from perspectives of regulators and participating companies. To achieve that, the research collects information on the claimed objectives of various EU regulatory sandboxes, categorizes them into regulator-oriented and company-oriented goals, and ultimately assesses whether these goals have been achieved from both perspectives. In addition, this research paper seeks to identify the flaws in the current regulatory sandboxes and propose potential improvements. By providing a comprehensive overview of the existing European regulatory sandboxes, the author highlights practical omissions encountered during their establishment and explores strategies to address these issues.