Following the adoption of the Council general approach on the Commission’s proposal for a Regulation amending the Benchmarks Regulation ((EU) 2016/1011) as regards the exemption of certain third country foreign exchange benchmarks and the designation of replacement benchmarks for certain benchmarks in cessation on 7 October 2020, the European Parliament Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) … Continue Reading
Representatives from Member States have reached a compromise on the Commission’s proposal for a Regulation amending the Benchmarks Regulation ((EU) 2016/1011) as regards the exemption of certain third country foreign exchange benchmarks and the designation of replacement benchmarks for certain benchmarks in cessation. The Council general approach was adopted following a ‘silence procedure’ on the … Continue Reading
On 24 September 2020, the European Commission published its long-awaited Capital Markets Union (CMU) Action Plan. The CMU Action Plan serves as a list of policies the Commission would like to introduce over the upcoming years, together with a timeline for the adoption of concrete legislative proposals. The main objective of the CMU is to … Continue Reading
The discussions on the European Commission proposal on the so-called “MiFID Quick Fix”, which also includes proposed amendments to the Prospectus Regulation and the Securitisation Regulation and corresponding changes to the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) are progressing. Following an initial Council Working Group meeting on 3 September, EU Member States’ representatives reconvened on 17 September … Continue Reading
The outline of the anticipated EU legislative framework for markets in crypto-assets is becoming clearer and the European Commission is preparing to publish a legislative proposal by the end of September. The legislative initiative on markets with crypto-assets fall within the broader Commission policy initiative on digital finance, which will also include a legislative proposal … Continue Reading
On 3 September 2020, representatives of Member States met to discuss the Capital Markets Recovery Package. The package consists of amendments to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), the so called MiFID “quick fix”, amendments to the Prospectus Regulation, amendments to the Securitisation Regulation and the corresponding changes to the Capital Requirements Regulation … Continue Reading
It is understood that the European Commission is close to adopting its legislative proposal on Digital Operational Resilience for the Financial Sector. The legislative proposal, which follows a public consultation held by the Commission in Q1 2020, would establish a unified framework for the coherent application of all components of risk management for the information … Continue Reading
On 8 June 2020, the European Commission published the long-awaited draft level 2 measures incorporating sustainability issues and considerations into the EU financial services regulatory framework, including the UCITS Directive, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), MiFID II, the Solvency II Directive, and the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD). The draft delegated acts also aim … Continue Reading
On 08 April 2020 the European Commission published a consultation on its forthcoming Renewed Sustainable Finance Action Plan [link]. The updated Commission action plan comes as a follow-up to its initial 2018 Sustainable Finance Action Plan and is meant to broaden and deepen the EU sustainable finance regulatory framework. Building on from the legislative and … Continue Reading
The European Commission intends to propose a number of far-reaching measures in order to increase the EU’s efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. After the deadline for Member States to transpose the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5MLD)) into national law on 10 January 2020, the Commission is due to publish a new Action … Continue Reading
On 9 March 2020, the European Commission Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance (TEG) published its final report on the taxonomy. The final report and its Annex present the TEG’s final recommendations to the European Commission (Commission) relating to the overarching design of the taxonomy, the technical screening criteria for climate change mitigation objectives, climate change … Continue Reading
On 19 December 2019, the Council of the EU (Council) published a note from the General Secretariat of the Council to the Delegations attaching the following addenda: a three-column table setting out the negotiating positions of the European Commission (Commission), the Council and the European Parliament (Parliament) in respect of the proposed amendments to the … Continue Reading
On 19 December 2019, the European Commission (Commission) launched a public consultation on a digital operational resilience framework for financial services. The consultation, which was published in parallel with a separate consultation on crypto assets, comes as the Commission is working towards a new Digital Finance Strategy. The aim of the strategy would be to … Continue Reading
On 9 December 2019, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published two reports on financial stability implications of BigTech in finance and third party dependencies in cloud services. The two reports come as BigTech firms – large companies with established technology platforms – play an increasingly prominent role in the financial system and have begun to … Continue Reading
The Council of the EU and the European Parliament have reached a provisional compromise agreement on the Commission proposal for a regulation on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investments (the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Regulation). After a fifth round of political trilogue negotiations on 3 December 2019, a sixth round was required on … Continue Reading
On Wednesday 6 November 2019 the EU legislators held their second trilogue negotiation round on the proposal for a Regulation on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment (hereinafter: the ‘Taxonomy proposal’). The proposed regulation will establish the conditions and the framework to create a unified classification system on what economy activities can … Continue Reading
On 8 October 2019, the members of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) committee questioned Commissioner-designate Valdis Dombrovskis in a nearly three-hour long joint hearing. Once approved, Dombrovskis, who is Commission President-elect Ursula Von Der Leyen nominee to be the new Executive Vice-President for a Europe that … Continue Reading
On 25 September 2019, the Council Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER II) endorsed the draft compromise text for the European Commission proposal on the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. At the same time, EU Member States requested the Finnish presidency to commence trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament. The Sustainable Finance Taxonomy is considered a cornerstone of the future … Continue Reading
On 16 September 2019 the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a working paper by its Monetary and Economic Department on Embedded supervision: how to build regulation into blockchain finance. The working paper suggests that asset tokenisation and the use of the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) in finance provides new avenues for the supervision … Continue Reading
