On 26 March 2021, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a final report containing technical advice to the European Commission on procedural rules for imposing fines and penalties on benchmark administrators under its direct supervision.

The technical advice follows a consultation paper that ESMA issued on 23 December 2020. The final report includes a section that briefly summarises the feedback received to the consultation paper and presents different proposals on the content of the rules of procedure to impose penalties on benchmark administrators under the direct supervision of ESMA. The proposals aim at ensuring that as far as possible the procedural rules for benchmark administrators are aligned and are consistent with the procedural rules applicable to credit rating agencies and trade repositories as well as with the proposals made in March 2020 with regards to third country central counterparties.

The Commission is expected to adopt a delegated act and will need to specify all the aspects on which ESMA has advised.