According to Article 7(2) of the Short Selling Regulation, ESMA has to publish a list of the thresholds applicable to the sovereign issuers for the purpose of the notification to competent authorities of significant net short position in sovereign debt.

The way these notification thresholds are defined is further specified in the Commission Delegated Regulation No 918/2012 (the “DR”). The DR specifies that initial threshold categories shall be:
1.0.1% applicable where the total amount of outstanding issued sovereign debt is between 0 and 500 billion euros;
2.0.5% applicable where the total amount of outstanding issued sovereign debt is above 500 billion euros or where there is a liquid futures market for the particular sovereign debt.

The additional incremental levels shall be set at 50% of the initial thresholds. The reporting thresholds shall be monetary amounts fixed by applying the percentage thresholds to the outstanding sovereign debt of the sovereign issuer. They will be revised and updated quarterly to reflect changes in the total amount of outstanding sovereign debt of each sovereign issuer.

In addition, the DR states that the amount of outstanding debt should be calculated using a duration adjusted approach. ESMA has published a Q&A document on how to proceed for the duration adjustment.

The table of thresholds contains the name of the sovereign issuer, the amount of outstanding debt duration adjusted, the initial threshold amount and the relevant percentage, the incremental threshold amount and the relevant percentage.

Please note that the figures of the amount of outstanding debt are duration adjusted (not nominal amounts) and are approximations provided by competent authorities.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA) published today their Joint Committee final Report on guidelines for handling consumer complaints in the securities and banking sectors. The document aims to increase market confidence and for the benefit of consumers and firms alike it will ensure a harmonised approach to handling complaints for all 28 EU Member States and across all financial services sectors.The final report published today is part of the efforts of the European Supervisory Authorities to bring further supervisory convergence across the securities and banking sectors. It was developed on the basis of the existing complaints-handling guidelines established by EIOPA (the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) for the insurance sector. The report was launched for a public consultation last year and this final version takes into consideration the feedback received.ESMA and the EBA consider that these guidelines will ensure a consistent approach to complaints-handling across the EU. Consumers can purchase financial services and products in the investment, banking and insurance sectors across the entire EU Single Market and these guidelines will allow them to refer to a single set of complaints-handling arrangements. EU consumers will therefore be able to rely on the same approach irrespective of what type of product they have purchased and where they have purchased it.In addition to strengthening consumer protection -a key statutory objective for ESMA and for the EBA-, the guidelines will also allow firms, some of which sell products from more than one sector across the EU, to streamline and standardise their own complaints-handling arrangements. National regulators too will be able to supervise the same harmonised requirements across all sectors of financial services in their own jurisdictions.The guidelines will be translated into the official languages of the European Union (EU) and they will become applicable two months after the date of publication of their translations.

Joint ESAs thematic repository of national financial education initiatives on digitalisation - with a specific focus on cybersecurity, scams and fraud