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Financial market transactions in derivatives worth trillions of euros will soon be subject to strict EU standards. The European Parliament adopted the new EU Regulation today. An agreement with Council had been agreed on previously.
There will only be very few exceptions to the clearing and reporting requirement, such as for the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlement and 'end-users', such as companies who use derivatives to secure the acquistiion of raw materials or that of long-term contracts. The authorisation and supervision of central counter-parties (CCPs) will be subject to national supervisors, the European authority ESMA will be in charge of the transparency register.
If the bodies of national supervisors raise concerns over the registration, ESMA will have the final say. The European Parliament secured this provision and further provisions on reporting requirements and a sunset-clause.
With the future standards, the EU will regulate what has been the most untransparent and risk-bound part of the financial market. According to the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), derivatives accounted for $707 trillion in 2011, the major part playing currency derivatives, interest derivatives and credit-default swaps (CDS). Derivatives on raw materials and shares only play a minor role.
So-called OTC (over-the -counter) derivatives were a major source of the global financial market crisis as there were and still are neither transparency nor own-capital requirements.