On 6 February 2026, there was published in the Official Journal of the EU (OJ), Commission Delegated Regulation 2026/305 of 29 October 2025 supplementing the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) with regard to regulatory technical standards (RTS) specifying the operational conditions, the representativeness obligation and the reporting requirements related to the active account requirement (AAR).
Background
Regulation (EU) 2024/2987 seeks to address financial stability risks caused by EU clearing members and clients being exposed to systemically important third-country central counterparties (CCPs). It does this by inserting Article 7a into EMIR which requires certain financial counterparties (FCs) and non-financial counterparties (NFCs) to hold, for certain categories of derivative contracts, at least one active account at an EU CCP and for some of those FCs and NFCs to clear at least a representative number of trades in this account.
Article 7a(8) of EMIR (as amended) mandates the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to further specify the conditions of the AAR in an RTS. ESMA published a Consultation Paper with draft RTS on 20 November 2024. The consultation closed on 27 January 2025. ESMA issued a Final Report on the draft RTS on 19 June 2025. On 29 October 2025, the European Commission adopted a Commission Delegated Regulation containing the RTS.
Next steps
The Delegated Regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the OJ (26 February 2026).