On 19 June 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its Final Report setting out draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the conditions of the Active Account Requirement (AAR).

Background

Regulation (EU) 2024/2987 seeks to address financial stability risks caused by EU clearing members and clients being exposed to systemically important third-country central counterparties (CCPs). It does this by inserting Article 7a into EMIR which requires certain financial counterparties (FCs)  and non-financial counterparties (NFCs) to hold, for certain categories of derivative contracts, at least one active account at an EU CCP and for some of those FCs and NFCs to clear at least a representative number of trades in this account.

Article 7a(8) of EMIR (as amended) mandates ESMA to further specify the conditions of the AAR in an RTS.

ESMA published a Consultation Paper with draft RTS on 20 November 2024. The consultation closed on 27 January 2025. ESMA also held a public hearing on the consultation on 20 January 2025.

Final Report

In the Final Report ESMA sets out draft RTS further specifying the requirements under paragraph 3, points (a), (b) and (c) of Article 7a of EMIR, the conditions for stress testing such conditions, the details of the representatives obligation under paragraph 3, point (d) of Article 7a of EMIR, as well as the details of the reporting in accordance with Article 7b of EMIR.

The Final Report is structured as follows:

  • Sections 1 and 2 – Executive summary and introduction.
  • Section 3 – The scope of the AAR on which ESMA has based its quantitative analysis and the different policy choices outlined in the Final Report.
  • Section 4 – Outlines the requirements proposed by ESMA to meet respectively the operational conditions set out under points (a) to (c) of Article 7a(3), and their stress-testing.
  • Section 5 – Specifies the details of the representativeness obligation under condition (d) of Article 7a(3), including the relevant classes of derivatives, the different trade size and maturity ranges, the number of most relevant subcategories per class of derivatives, as well as the duration of reference periods.
  • Section 6 – Details the reporting requirements for counterparties subject to the AAR under Article 7b.

Annex V of the Final Report contains the draft RTS.

ESMA has streamlined the operational conditions and the stress-testing in response to feedback to its public consultation. Additionally, compared to the initial proposal outlined in the consultation document, the Final Report includes a simplification of the reporting requirements related to risks and activities, the representativeness obligation and the fulfilment of the operational conditions. 

Next steps

The draft RTS will now be submitted to the European Commission for endorsement, following which it will be subject to scrutiny by the European Parliament and the Council.