On Wednesday 29 June, the Council of the European Union agreed on its negotiating position with the European Parliament on the proposal for a European Single Access Point (ESAP), which is part of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) package to be presented at the end of 2021 (see EUROPE 12971/17). This proposal aims to create a single point of access to public information about EU companies and EU investment products.
ESAP is expected to make it easier for investors to access the information they need to make an investment decision.
In its position, the EU Council specified that the competent national authorities should be the collection bodies for the information to be provided on ESAP. This approach will not impose any new type of information obligation on European companies.
Investors will have access to: - consolidated annual financial statements; - consolidated management reports; - audit reports; - reports on payments to governments. Well-structured metadata will allow information to be extracted and compared.
Contrary to what Germany recommended at the December 2021 Ecofin Council (see EUROPE 12848/10), it will not be a private company, but the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) will have the task of establishing and operating ESAP as of 2026.
“ESMA should in particular contribute to ensuring the integrity, transparency, efficiency and the proper functioning of financial markets. One of its tasks, among others, is to improve investor protection”, the EU Council’s position states. The EU Council has therefore adopted the European Commission’s original proposal on this point (see EUROPE 12836/6).
The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) will need to develop draft implementing technical standards to specify, among other things, the additional metadata that should accompany the information and the structuring of the data in the information. It will submit these draft implementing technical standards to the European Commission for adoption.
ESMA, in close cooperation with the European Banking Authority and EIOPA, will have to produce an annual report on ESAP, “to ensure regular monitoring of its functioning and to ensure that any potential problems with its operation are transparent so that, if necessary, appropriate action can be taken by ESMA, the collecting bodies and entities”.
In its position, the EU Council states that ESAP should be gradually phased in and its essential parts should become operational between 2026 and 2030. The Member States are therefore allowing themselves more time than initially proposed by the European Commission, which had counted on a rapid implementation and start-up period from 2022 to 2026, thereby making ESAP operational by 2027.
See EU Council positions on ESAP:
- part 1: https://aeur.eu/f/2ev
- part 2: https://aeur.eu/f/2ew
- part 3: https://aeur.eu/f/2ex (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)