09 March 2020

ESMA consults on draft technical standards for benchmarks

ESMA launched a consultation on draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR) covering governance, methodology, infringements reporting, critical benchmarks.

The outcome of the ESAs Review, Article 5 of Regulation (EU) 2019/2175, introduced changes to the BMR including a new mandate for ESMA to develop draft RTS to further specify certain of the BMR’s requirements, namely:

1.    the requirements to ensure that the governance arrangements of an administrator are sufficiently robust;

2.    the conditions that ensures that the methodology an administrator uses to determine a benchmark complies with the relevant requirements in Article 12(1) of the Benchmarks Regulation;

3.    the characteristics of the systems and controls established by an administrator to ensure the integrity of input data in order to be able to identify and report to the competent authority any conduct that may involve manipulation or attempted manipulation of a benchmark;

4.    the criteria that the competent authority applies when assessing how the benchmark is transitioned to a new administrator or ceases to be provided; and

5.    the criteria under which competent authorities may require changes to the compliance statement.

Next steps

ESMA will consider the responses to this consultation when developing the draft RTS for submission to the European Commission for adoption in the final legal text. The closing date for responses from stakeholders is 9 May 2020.

Full press release

Consultation paper

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