On 29 October 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a speech by its chair, Steven Maijoor, focusing on the European Supervisory Authority’s (ESA) role under the Benchmarks Regulation.

In his speech Mr Maijoor focuses on the implementation of the third country regimes, the advice ESMA provided to national competent authorities and its role as a member of the colleges of EU critical benchmarks – LIBOR, EURIBOR and EONIA. Mr Maijoor also outlines ESMA’s future supervisory responsibilities relating to third country benchmarks administrators and EU critical benchmarks under the ESAs review.

Among other things Mr Maijoor mentions that the EUR Working Group on euro risk-free rates is about to publish an important recommendation regarding the implementation of fallback provisions in contracts referencing EURIBOR and he invites market participants to carefully consider this upcoming recommendation.