The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a consultation paper on draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) on access to data and aggregation and comparison of data across trade repositories (TRs) under Article 81 of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).

Article 81 EMIR requires TRs to publish aggregate positions by class of derivatives on the contracts reported to them and to make that information available to entitled entities to enable them to fulfil their respective responsibilities and mandates. ESMA was mandated to develop draft RTS to facilitate this process, and fulfilled its mandate in September 2012. The draft RTS were subsequently endorsed by the European Commission, published in the Official Journal of the EU on 23 February 2013 and entered into force on 15 March 2013.

Since the RTS’ publication and coming into force, ESMA notes that the entitled entities have had to adapt to different and sometimes divergent practices with respect to access to data and data aggregation and comparison. ESMA thus considers that current functionalities offered for data access require a significant improvement and that comparison of data is not sufficiently robust, which requires some elements to be fixed and improved.

The consultation paper proposes amendments to the current RTS to ensure direct and immediate access to data and aggregation and comparison of data across TRs. The proposed improvements refer to the following aspects:

  • standardised output format of the TR data, based on international ISO standards, allowing better comparison and aggregation of data across repositories;
  • minimum types of data queries that need to be available for the authorities;
  • standardised and secure data exchange, based on ISO standards, between TRs and national competent authorities;
  • standard frequencies for the provision of direct and immediate access to TR data; and
  • secure machine-to-machine connection and use of data encryption protocols.

The deadline for comments on the consultation paper is 1 February 2016.

View ESMA consults on improved access to trade repository data, 11 December 2015