On 10 April 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a Final Report on systematic internaliser (SI) notification, the volume cap and transparency calculations and circuit breakers.

Background

Directive (EU) 2024/790 and Regulation (EU) 2024/791 amended both the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR). The text of the Directive and the Regulation were published in the Official Journal of the EU on 8 March 2024 and entered into force on 28 March 2024. The updated texts of MiFID II and MiFIR require ESMA to develop new technical standards and amend those in force in several areas with different legislative deadlines.

On 10 July 2024, ESMA published its third consultation paper on the future technical standards and technical advice on the revised MiFIR and MiFID II. Among other things the third consultation paper contained:

  • Amendments to the regulatory technical standards (RTS) specifying the provisions on the volume cap and transparency calculations (Commission Delegated Regulation 2017/577 (RTS 3)) following the change in the MiFIR review from a double to a single volume cap.
  • Proposals to recast the RTS specifying the organisational requirements for trading venues (Commission Delegated Regulation 2017/584 (RTS 7)), focussing on the new mandate on circuit breakers and reflecting the changes stemming from the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).
  • Proposals for a new Commission Implementing Regulation containing implementing technical standards (ITS) on the content and format of the SI notification.

The deadline for comments on the consultation paper was 15 September 2024 / 15 October 2024.

Final Report

In the Final Report ESMA comments on the feedback it received to its consultation and sets out the final draft RTS (Annex II of the Final Report).

Section 3 of the Final Report focuses on the draft ITS on SI notification defining a procedure to be followed by investment firms that act as SIs, and the template to be used for notifying a Member State competent authority.

Section 4 contains the proposed amendments to the existing RTS 3, reflecting the switch from double to single volume cap introduced by the MiFIR review, as well as the upcoming use of transaction reporting data for transparency calculations. ESMA confirms the phasing out of daily reporting requirements for data flowing into the FITRS and DVC systems, acting as a concrete and substantial contribution to the reduction of the overall reporting burden.

Section 5 presents the draft RTS 7a, specifying organisational requirements for trading venues. The draft RTS includes new provisions related to the establishments of circuit breakers and targeted amendments to provisions previously included in RTS 7, which have been revised due to the entry into application of the DORA framework.

Next steps

ESMA has submitted the Final Report to the European Commission.

The Commission has three months to decide whether to endorse the proposed amendments to the RTS and the proposed ITS.