On 28 November 2022, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a final report on the review of the regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the form and content of an application for recognition under the Benchmarks Regulation.

Under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/1645, an application for recognition of a third country administrator needs to include information on i) the applicant and its legal representative in the Union and ii) the benchmarks provided by the applicant. This Delegated Regulation needs to be updated to reflect the changes to the recognition regime in the Benchmarks Regulation introduced in 2019 by Regulation (EU) 2019/2175 with the transfer of some supervisory responsibilities to ESMA as of January 2022.

ESMA is also suggesting requesting additional information or further specifying some of the information already requested in the existing RTS in order to allow ESMA to properly assess whether the applicant has established all the necessary arrangements to meet the requirements of the Benchmarks Regulation.

Following feedback to ESMA’s Consultation Paper on ‘Review of the RTS on the form and content of an application for recognition under the Benchmarks Regulation’, ESMA has taken note of market participants’ considerations on ensuring consistency of the proposed RTS with the Benchmarks Regulation with regard to commodity benchmarks for which different requirements are applicable. The draft RTS have been adjusted in the final report, taking into account the different types of benchmarks and the related requirements.

The amended draft RTS will be submitted to the European Commission. The Commission has three months to decide whether to endorse the RTS.