In its newsletter of 30 August 2024, the Dutch Authority on the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, AFM) reminds Dutch market parties that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published consultation packages regarding the review of the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MIFIR) and the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).

In 2022, the European Commission adopted two legislative proposals to review MIFIR and MiFID II. This review focuses on making amendments to improve the transparency and the availability of market data and the level-playing field between execution venues. Moreover, the review also aims to ensure that EU market infrastructures remain competitive at an international level.

ESMA published three consultation packages regarding a range of technical standards connected to this review of MIFIR and MiFID II. The first and second consultation have recently ended but the third consultation is currently ongoing:

  1. The first consultation: 21 May 2024 until 28 August 2024.
  • The first consultation focused on the following aspects:
    • Transparency requirements for trading venues, investment firms and Approved Publication Arrangements (APAs), and for transactions in non-equity instruments, such as bonds and derivatives.
    • The costs that trading venues, consolidated tape providers (CTP), APAs and investment firms are allowed to charge for the provision of trading data, such as buy and sell prices.
    • The requirements for trading venues and designated publishing entities to enable the use of reference data for transparency purposes.
  1. The second consultation: 23 May 2024 until 28 August 2024.
  • The second consultation focused on the following aspects:
    • Data that trading venues and APAs will be required to submit to the CTP for bonds and the consolidated data that the CTP for bonds will be required to publish.
    • The methods for calculating the amount or revenue that CTPs will need to redistribute to trading venues.
    • The criteria against which applicant CTPs will be assessed in the procedure for the selection of a single CTP per instrument.
  1. The third consultation: 10 July 2024 until 30 September or 15 October 2024.
  • The third consultation is ongoing and focuses on the following aspects:
    • Rules on the liquidity assessment for equity instruments, equity transparency and on the volume cap.
    • New Implementing Technical Standards on systematic internalisers.
    • The equity CTP in relation to the input/output data, to ensure full alignment between the transparency requirements and the CTP specifications.
    • Flags to be used in the post-trade transparency reports for non-equity instruments which were missing in the previous consultation.
    • New rules specifying organisational requirements of trading venues, adding new provisions on circuit breakers and with targeted amendments to adapt to the Digital Operational Resilience Act framework.

See the AFM’s update on the consultation here: link