On 3 October 2024, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a consultation paper on the review of regulatory technical standard 22 (RTS 22) on transaction data reporting under Article 26 and RTS 24 on order book data to be maintained under Article 25 of the revised text of the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR).

The revised text of MiFIR entered into force on 28 March 2024 and amended, among other things, Articles 25 (book record keeping) and 26 (transaction data reporting). ESMA was mandated by the European Commission to revise the existing technical standards under these Articles, RTS 22 and RTS 24.

The consultation paper has two different parts covering (i) proposed amendments to RTS 22 in relation to transaction reporting and (ii) proposed changes to RTS 24 in relation to order book data.

RTS 22

The part of the consultation paper dealing with RTS 22 sets out ESMA’s proposals to address its mandate under Article 26, particularly in relation to:

  • Rules for determination of the relevant competent authority of the most relevant market in terms of liquidity.
  • New fields to report transaction effective date and the entity subject to the reporting obligation.
  • Proposed new identifiers and changes to existing ones to link specific transactions and identify aggregated orders.
  • Amendments to define the relevant categories of indices.
  • Identification of the ‘date by which the transactions are to be reported’.
  • Amendments to the fields to align the transaction reporting requirements with the European Market Infrastructure Regulation and Securities Financing Transaction Regulation reporting frameworks and international standards.

ESMA also proposes further enhancements concerning:

  • Identification of transactions in distributed ledger technology financial instruments that fall under the scope of Article 26.
  • Extension of the scope of cases considered as transmission of an order agreement under Article 4 RTS 22 and extension to specific cases of portfolio and fund managers under Article 7.
  • Amendments linked to changes introduced according to the revised Article 27.
  • Changes to the fields to improve the quality and effectiveness of the reporting.

RTS 24

The part of the consultation paper covering RTS 24 sets out proposed amendments that are based on the mandate given to ESMA, in particular relating to machine readable format empowerment.

Annexes

The Annexes in section 9 of the consultation paper set out a consolidated overview of the proposed changes and considerations made across both parts of the consultation paper.

Next steps

The deadline for comments on the consultation paper is 3 January 2025.

ESMA expects to publish a final report and submit revised draft technical standards to the European Commission for endorsement in Q1 2025.