Endorsement is one of two regimes provided in the CRA Regulation that allow credit ratings issued in a third country to be used for regulatory purposes in the EU – the other being equivalence/certification. Article 21(3) of the CRA Regulation requires ESMA to issue and update guidelines on the application of the endorsement regime specified under Article 4(3) of the same Regulation. This Consultation Paper proposes to update the previously issued 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement.
The proposed update of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement is mainly driven by the need to reflect the changes to Articles 6-12 and Annex I introduced by CRA 3, which will enter into force for the purposes of equivalence and endorsement on 1 June 2018. On that basis, ESMA has to update the Methodological Framework on which ESMA relies for assessing a third-country legal and supervisory framework for the purposes of endorsement and equivalence. This Methodological Framework is provided in Annex II of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement. By 1 June 2018, ESMA should also have completed a reassessment of all the previously assessed third-country legal and regulatory frameworks against the new requirements based on the updated Methodological Framework (provided in Annex III).

ESMA has taken this opportunity to reassess its approach to endorsement more broadly, based on the supervisory experience acquired since the adoption of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement. The proposed changes and clarification of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement focus in particular on ESMA’s understanding of points (b), (c), (d), and (e) of Article 4(3) of the CRA Regulation.
Furthermore, some parts of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement relate to the establishment of ESMA, the initial registration of CRAs and various transitional arrangements. The proposed updated Guidelines on Endorsement do not include these parts, as they are no longer relevant. Finally, some information in the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement was not addressed to market participants but referred to ESMA’s internal processes. This information has also been excluded from the proposed updated guidelines on Endorsement, but is, for context, summarised in Section 4 of this Consultation Paper.
 

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is publishing this discussion paper in order to seek stakeholders’ views on the preparation of the regulatory technical standards ESMA is required to draft under Article 5(2) “Clearing Obligation Procedure” of the Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and Council on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories (EMIR). The input from stakeholders will help ESMA in the development of the relevant technical standards to be drafted and submitted to the European Commission for endorsement in the form of Commission Regulations, i.e. a legally binding instrument directly applicable in all Member States of the European Union. One essential element in the development of draft technical standards is the analysis of the costs and benefits that those legal provisions will imply. Input in this respect and any supportive data will be highly appreciated and kept confidential where required. Please respond to the consultation using the response template. The closing date for responses is 12 September 2013.

Reasons for publication

On 15 January 2016 the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) received a formal request from the European Commission (Commission) to provide technical advice to assist the Commission in formulating a Regulation on fees for Trade Repositories (TRs) under SFTR by a delegated act.

Contents

The present report contains nine sections. Section 1 refers to the Executive Summary of the report. Section 2 explains the background to our proposals. Section 3 outlines the ESMA’s expected costs. Section 4 establishes the general approach for the determination of fees under EMIR and SFTR. Section 5 explains how ESMA will manage surpluses and deficits under EMIR and SFTR. Section 6 points out the rationale and computation of TRs fees for registration and extension of registration under SFTR. Sections 7 and 8 present the supervision fees under EMIR and SFTR and recognition fees under SFTR. Section 9 refers to the conditions of payment and reimbursement and, finally, Section 10 addresses the instances where delegation to NCAs takes place. Annex I contains the summary of the questions posed by ESMA and Annex II includes the Commission’s mandate to ESMA.

The amendments to fees under EMIR that are consulted in this document are required in order to ensure level –playing field with the ESMA’s fees to TRs under SFTR.

Next Steps

ESMA will consider the feedback it receives to this consultation in Q1 2017 and expects to publish and submit a final report of the technical advice to the European Commission for endorsement by end of Q1/beginning of Q2 of 2017.