On 30 March 2022, there was published on the legislation.gov.uk website The European Market Infrastructure Regulation (United States of America Regulated Market Equivalence) Regulations 2022 together with an explanatory memorandum.

The Regulations revoke an existing equivalence decision, under Article 2a of the onshored European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and re-enacts the decision with an updated annex. The annex provides a list of designated contract markets in the US that are authorized by the CFTC.

The original EMIR 2a equivalence decision retained in UK law applied to the CFTC’s regulatory and supervisory oversight of their authorized designated contract markets. The annex to that decision lists only the specific markets to which it applies. If further markets obtain CFTC authorization, they will not benefit from the decision until they are listed in the annex to an equivalence decision. HM Treasury sees no policy rationale to continue to limit the scope of the EMIR 2a equivalence decision only to markets that were CFTC-authorised at the time it was originally made. HM Treasury remains of the view that the CFTC regime is equivalent on an outcomes basis, and is therefore comfortable extending the scope of its equivalence decision to all current CFTC-authorised markets.