The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued final draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) related to derivative transactions by non-European Union (EU) counterparties. The RTS implement provisions of the Regulation on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories (EMIR).

ESMA delivers second set of advice on EMIR equivalence Following its technical advice published on 9 September 2013, the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) has published a supplement to its advice to the European Commission on the equivalence of the regulatory regime for central counterparties (CCPs) of Japan with the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). This supplement to the September 2013 Final report sets out ESMA’s advice to the European Commission is in respect of the equivalence between the Japanese regulatory regime for commodity CCPs and the regulatory regime for CCPs under EMIR. ESMA proposes conditional equivalence As for ESMA’s advice to the Commission in respect of Japan for CCPs which clear transactions relating to securities, currencies, interest rates, credit, weather, GDP and other indices, ESMA considers that the Japanese regulatory regime for commodity CCPs contains legal provisions and involves supervision and enforcement similar to that of EMIR. The Commission is expected to use ESMA’s technical advice to prepare possible equivalence decisions. Where it adopts such a decision, certain provisions of EMIR may be disapplied in favour of equivalent third-country rules. In particular, ESMA may recognise within the EU a CCP which is authorised outside the EU. The different pieces of advice are available on ESMA’s website.