On 5 December 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published updated versions of its Q&As on market structures and transparency under the MiFID II Directive and MiFIR.

The updated Q&As on market structures inserts a new question and answer into section 3 on Direct Electronic Access and algorithmic trading (Q&A 31), which clarifies the scope of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/584. It also inserts a new question and answer into section 5 on multilateral and bilateral systems (Q&A 9a) on whether member preferencing functionalities can be used to formalise pre-arranged transactions.

The updated Q&As on transparency inserts a new question and answer into section 4 on non-equity transparency (Q&A 19), which clarifies how trading venues should convert large in scale and size specific to the instrument thresholds into lots.