Communication: Responding to challenges for critical financial market infrastructures and further developing the Capital Markets Union

The financial crisis demonstrated that the lack of transparency in the derivatives sector and the complex interdependence between financial market participants increased uncertainty in times of stress and posed risks to global financial stability.

In 2012, based on the decisions taken by the G20 in 2009 in response to the financial crisis, the EU adopted the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) to address these concerns by regulating Central Counterparties (CCPs), ensuring consistency of CCPs' supervisory oversight via colleges of supervisors including relevant national supervisors and the European Securities and Markets Authority (EMSA), and requiring standardised over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives to be cleared in CCPs. Since then, CCPs have gained an increasingly central role in capital markets in Europe.

On 4 May 2017 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a first set of amendments to EMIR. The objective of that proposal is to reflect the experience gathered during the first years of application of EMIR by making the application of the Regulation simpler and more proportionate in certain areas and to create further incentives for CCPs to offer central clearing of derivatives to counterparties in order to make the financial system even safer.

Beyond this proposal the Commission is of the view that, in view of the challenges in the area of derivatives clearing, further changes will be necessary to improve the current framework that ensures financial stability and supports the further development and deepening of the Capital Markets Union (CMU).

ESO: Background information: Launch of reviewed rules on derivatives market http://www.europeansources.info/record/launch-of-reviewed-rules-on-derivatives-market/

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