Verena Ross' speech at ECMI/CEPS Webinar, 20 April 2022: "ESMA – driving forward high-quality supervision and transparency in a single EU capital market"

Keynote Speech - The reform of financial markets: halfway there Steven Maijoor, ESMA Chair AFME Post Trade Conference, London Excerpt "Three challenges Ladies and gentlemen, so far so good about the completion of the legislation to meet our G20 commitments and developing a single rulebook for financial services. Let me now turn to the three main challenges I see in the current phase of regulatory reform. My main message is that while the legislative phase nears completion, it does not imply the completion of the regulatory reform programme. Let me explain that further by identifying three commitments for the next phase of regulatory reform. Firstly, commitment to the financial reform, its implementation and to adequate supervision. Legislation needs to be accompanied by good implementing measures, to ensure the legislation works in practice, and credible supervision. Secondly, a commitment to supervisory convergence in order to establish a truly internal market and to prevent regulatory arbitrage within the EU. Agreeing at EU level on a single rule book for all 28 Member States is a big step. However, ensuring that this single rule book is supervised consistently across the 28 Member States is an even bigger step. Thirdly, in order to prevent crises we need commitment to the lessons learned from the crisis regarding risk analysis and the availability of high quality data on financial markets. We need more information on securities markets. Since the beginning of the financial crisis securities regulators have learned a lot about how to deal with financial stability – an area that was beforehand mainly reserved for central bankers and banking regulators. Information on financial markets is key to achieve the financial stability objective. It is therefore no surprise that many pieces of recently introduced legislation already include data requirements. Securities regulators however also need to step up their role on this and need more resources to collect and analyse data. It goes without saying that more data and analysis will also support our other important objective of investor protection."

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has sent the European Commission a Final Report proposing an amendment to Article 5 of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No.1247/2012 (ITS on reporting) on the format and frequency of reporting to trade repositories under EMIR. The amendment relates specifically to the reporting of exchange traded derivatives (ETDs) and proposes postponing the reporting start date by one year. Background Article 5 regards the reporting start date of derivatives to trade repositories, however the current dates do not include a specification of ETDs. This specification would be useful as there is a risk currently that reporting of ETDs is not harmonised unless further regulatory guidance is issued. Based on the need to ensure the consistent implementation of EMIR, ESMA considered that guidelines and recommendations should be developed in relation to this issue. A delay in the reporting date for ETD transactions will allow sufficient time for the development of the relevant guidelines and their implementation by counterparties, trade repositories and regulators. The European Commission has three months to decide whether to endorse ESMA’s draft implementing technical standards.