Legal Basis According to Article 5(2) of Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories (EMIR), the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) shall develop draft regulatory technical standards specifying the class of OTC derivatives that should be subject to the clearing obligation, the date or dates from which the clearing obligation takes effect, including any phase in and the categories of counterparties to which the obligation applies, and the minimum remaining maturity of the OTC derivative contracts referred to in Article 4(1)(b)(ii) of EMIR. Background and Procedure On 1 October 2014, ESMA submitted a draft regulatory technical standard (RTS) on the clearing obligation to the European Commission pursuant to Article 10(1) of Regulation No (EU) 1095/2010 (the ESMA Regulation) and Article 5(2) of EMIR. This draft RTS covered Interest Rate Swaps. On 18 December 2014, the Commission informed ESMA of its intention to endorse with amendments this draft RTS and submitted to ESMA a modified version of the RTS (the “modified RTS”) introducing, among others, (1) amendments to the date on which the frontloading obligation starts to apply and (2) a new provision on the treatment of non-EU intragroup transactions. Pursuant to Article 10(1) of the ESMA Regulation, this notification from the Commission opens a period of six weeks during which ESMA may amend its draft RTS on the clearing obligation on the basis of the Commission’s proposed amendments and resubmit it to the Commission in the form of a formal opinion. ESMA has to send a copy of its formal opinion to the European Parliament and to the Council. In accordance with Article 44(1) of the ESMA Regulation the Board of Supervisors has to adopt a formal opinion. Executive Summary ESMA agrees with the ultimate objectives of the modifications that the European Commission intends to introduce. However, ESMA considers that the tool proposed by the Commission for the matter related to the non-EU intra group transactions is not appropriate from a legal perspective and, in the case that the Commission intention is to define a later application date for those transactions, ESMA stands ready to explore, in coordination with the Commission, a different manner to incorporate that provision. ESMA backs the modifications on the frontloading section, though has a few observations and improvements with respect to several recitals. ESMA proposes to incorporate the suggestion of the Commission to deal with the application of the 8 billion threshold to investment funds for the definitions of types of counterparties as a specific provision in the text of the RTS.

Today’s document published by ESMA contains opinions on 16 UK-based pension schemes where the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the competent authority for securities markets. After the exemptions are granted by the FCA, ESMA will publish the list of the types of entities/ arrangements that have been exempted.

The purpose of this document is to promote common supervisory approaches and practices in the application of MAR and its implementing measures. It does this by providing responses to questions posed by the general public and competent authorities in relation to the practical application of the MAR framework

The content of this document is aimed at competent authorities to ensure that in their supervisory activities and their actions are converging along the lines of the responses adopted by ESMA and at helping issuers, investors and other market participants by providing clarity on the content of the market abuse rules, rather than creating an extra layer of requirements.