On 25 September 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a consultation paper on fees for benchmarks administrators under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).

Article 5 of the BMR (as amended) provides ESMA with new direct supervisory powers. In particular, the amended BMR designates ESMA as the competent authority of both administrators of critical benchmarks, as referred to in points (a) and (c) of Article 20(1) of the BMR, and of third country administrators recognised under Article 32 of the BMR. These new ESMA supervisory responsibilities will start on 1 January 2022.

On 17 June 2020, ESMA received a formal request from the European Commission to provide technical advice to assist the Commission in formulating a delegated act on fees to be paid by administrators that will be supervised by ESMA under BMR.

The consultation paper now published contains ESMA’s proposed technical advice on supervisory fees to be paid to the European Supervisory Authority by administrators of a critical benchmark and third country administrators under the recognition regime. The proposal distinguishes between: one-off recognition fee to be paid by third country administrators applying for recognition; one-off authorisation fee to be paid by administrators of critical benchmarks applying for authorisation; annual supervisory fee to be paid by third country administrators and annual supervisory fee to be paid by administrators of a critical benchmark. Annex 1 contains ESMA’s consultation questions and Annex 2 includes the Commission’s mandate to ESMA.

The deadline for comments on the consultation paper is 6 November 2020. ESMA, after considering the feedback received, will publish a final report and submit the technical advice to the European Commission by 31st January 2020.