European Commission Proposes Technical Changes to the European Market Infrastructure Regulation

The European Commission has published a legislative proposal to amend the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. This proposal is the result of an extensive assessment of EMIR between 2015 and 2016. The proposal covers a wide-range of areas within EMIR, including reporting requirements, non-financial counterparties, exemptions and trade repositories.

The main proposals are:

• To introduce single-sided reporting of all exchange-traded derivatives. The central counterparty would be responsible for reporting the trade on behalf of both counterparties;
• To extend the pension fund clearing exemption for three more years;
• To exempt small NFCs from the clearing obligation;
• To provide that once an NFC has reached the clearing threshold for one particular asset class, the NFC would only be subject to the clearing obligation for that particular class of derivatives;
• Removing the backloading requirement (i.e. the requirement to report historic transactions);
• To treat all funds and fund managers globally as FCs; and
• To require CCPs to hold both contracts and positions on a bankruptcy remote basis; and
• To remove the requirements for small NFCs to report intra-group transactions.

The Commission will present further legislative proposals in June 2017 to ensure financial stability and the safety and soundness of CCPs that are of systemic relevance for financial markets across the EU and to support the further development of the Capital Markets Union.

View the legislative proposal.

View the annex to the legislative proposal.

You may like to view our client note, "EMIR Review: A New Extraterritorial Expansion to Third-Country Funds?".