Consultation Paper - Draft technical standards on the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR)

Who should read this paper?This paper may be specifically of interest to any investor that deals in financial instruments and emission allowances subject to the Market Abuse Regulation, issuers of instruments in the scope of the Regulation, financial intermediaries, operators of trading venues and participants in the emission allowance market.Responding to this paperESMA invites comments on all matters in this paper and in particular on the specific questions summarised in Annex 1. Comments are most helpful if they:·         respond to the question stated;·         contain a clear rationale, including on any related costs and benefits; and·         describe any alternatives ESMA should consider.Please use this “form to reply” and save it under the proposed format (please see the proposed file name format below).InstructionsPlease note that, in order to facilitate analysis of the large number of responses expected, ESMA will be using an IT tool that does not allow processing of responses which do not follow the formatting indications described below. Therefore, in responding stakeholders should:i.    use the published template and send their responses in Word format;ii.    not remove the tags of type   i.e. the response to one question has to be framed by the 2 tags corresponding to the question; andiii.    if they have no response to a question, not delete it and leave the text “TYPE YOUR TEXT HERE” between the tags. Naming protocol - In order to facilitate the handling of stakeholders responses please save your document using the following format:
ESMA_MAR_CP_TS_NAMEOFCOMPANY_NAMEOFDOCUMENT: e.g.if the respondent were ESMA, the name of the reply form would be ESMA_MAR_CP_TS_ESMA_REPLYFORM or ESMA_MAR_CP_TS_ESMA_ANNEX1
The closing date for the submission of responses is Wednesday 15 October 2014.All contributions should be submitted online at www.esma.europa.eu under the heading ‘Your input - Consultations’.Publication of responsesAll contributions received will be published following the close of the consultation, unless you request otherwise. Please clearly and prominently indicate in your submission any part you do not wish to be publically disclosed. A standard confidentiality statement in an email message will not be treated as a request for non-disclosure. A confidential response may be requested from us in accordance with ESMA’s rules on access to documents. We may consult you if we receive such a request. Any decision we make not to disclose the response is reviewable by ESMA’s Board of Appeal and the European Ombudsman.Data protectionInformation on data protection can be found at www.esma.europa.eu under the heading Legal Notice.