On 9 October 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its annual report on the application of waivers and deferrals under MIFIR.

Articles 4(4), 7(1), 9(2) and 11(1) of MIFIR mandates ESMA to monitor the application of pre-trade transparency waivers and deferred trade-publication. As part of this mandate, ESMA submits an annual report to the European Commission on how equity and non-equity waivers and deferrals regimes are applied in practice.

The report includes an analysis based on waiver applications that ESMA has received in the course of 2017 and 2018 for which it has issued an opinion to the national competent authority before December 2018. The report analyses the application of equity waivers, the deferral regime to equity instruments, non-equity waivers and the deferral regime to non-equity instruments. It also includes an overview of the deferral regimes applied across the different Member States distinguishing between on-venue and over-the-counter (OTC) application.

Section 3 analyses the application of equity waivers, section 4 describes the application of the deferral regime to equity instruments. In particular, section 4.2 provides an analysis related to the on-venue application of the regime and section 4.3 its OTC application. Section 5 analyses the application of non-equity waivers, section 6 describes the application of the deferral regime to non-equity instruments. In particular, section 6.2 provides an analysis related to the on-venue application of the regime and section 6.3 its OTC application.