The Council of the European Union adopted, on Tuesday 20 December, its negotiating position on the proposal for a regulation revising the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) (see EUROPE 13088/14).
“The EU Council’s position is more market-oriented and ambitious than the original Commission proposal”, explained a European source contacted by EUROPE on Wednesday 21 December.
With regard to the centralised database - or ‘consolidated tape’ (CTP) - the EU Council has introduced elements of pre-trade data, although it is only published on a post-trade basis.
The EU Council considered that “the CTP should be a commercial project, which would not be free, even for retailers”, the source said.
Therefore, it should be accessible to retailers, as well as to academics, at a reasonable price. The EU Council hopes to achieve more transparent and accessible information on transactions in the EU.
Like the European Parliament, the EU Council agreed on the necessity of the bond tape. The selection for CTP for the bond tape should start immediately after the necessary delegated act is applicable.
One of the most important changes from the Commission’s original proposal is the introduction of a separate regime on derivatives transparency. The EU Council wants to highlight the fact that derivatives are contracts and not securities. It had looked to stress the fact that only exchange-traded derivatives (ETDs) can be considered as ‘fungible contracts’ as opposed to OTC derivatives which are not.
This means that each OTC derivative is unique, at least in some details, as it is ‘created’ by the counterparties when they agree on all terms of the OTC derivative contract.
To read the position of the EU Council: https://aeur.eu/f/4rb (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)