The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a final report containing the final draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) and implementing technical standards (ITS) required under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR). The final report is organised in eleven chapters, each dedicated to one of the areas for which the BMR requested ESMA to develop draft technical standards. These include:
- procedures, characteristics and positioning of the oversight function;
- appropriateness and verifiability of input data;
- transparency of methodology;
- specification of elements of the code of conduct of contributors;
- governance and control requirements for supervised contributors;
- compliance statements for significant and non-significant benchmarks;
- specification of qualitative criteria for significant benchmarks;
- content of benchmark statements;
- information to be provided in applications for authorisation and registration;
- form and content for the application for recognition by third-country administrators; and
- minimum content of the cooperation arrangements between ESMA and competent authorities.
Each chapter summarises the relevant provisions and their objectives, provides an explanation of the related policy issues and references to the relevant responses received to the consultation paper on draft technical standards under BMR published by ESMA on 29 September 2016. The final report also include the final version of each of the draft technical standards and a cost-benefit analysis.
In terms of next steps, the draft technical standards have been submitted to the European Commission. The European Commission has three months to decide whether to endorse the technical standards.
View ESMA final draft technical standards under Benchmarks Regulation, 30 March 2017