European Single Access Point (ESAP)
- Category: European Union Carbon Market Glossary
The objective of the European Single Access Point (ESAP) legislative project is to create a common source of public and freely available financial and sustainability-related information of EU companies and investment products, regardless of where in the EU they are located or originated while enabling a better use and reuse of this information.
|
|
As observed by the EU financial market regulator (ESMA), nowadays corporates are required to generate large amounts of text and data to fulfil various obligations for disclosure and transparency. Some of this information is being collected by national registers and regulators whereas other information is reported directly to European authorities like ESMA or EBA/EIOPA.
The fragmentation is not just limited to the location of the data but also to the format and the language in which the data is provided. This situation is not only inefficient for the companies providing the data, it also constitutes an important barrier for investors and other users of the data and as such could be detrimental to cross-border investment and thus to companies’ ability to raise capital across the EU.
|
See also:
|
Hence, the objective of the ESAP is to create a common source of public and freely available financial and sustainability-related information of EU companies and investment products, regardless of where in the EU they are located or originated while enabling a better use and reuse of this information. In doing so, the aim is to be able to provide more visibility and make funding more accessible for EU companies and save time and resources of investors in finding information, so that investors will be able to make sound and well-informed investment decisions.
ESAP will be a data platform through which an investor will be able to draw public information reported to several national and EU registers. ESAP is not foreseen to create new reporting obligations. Instead, the idea is to gather all the information into a user-friendly web portal available in all EU official languages. The portal will ultimately include automated translation services and search tools. The ESAP is also planned to support an Application Programming Interface (API) and notification services enabling easy access and monitoring.
The aim of ESAP is to include over time all relevant information relating to issuers as well as financial products. However, the implementation will be in done in phases, foreseen to start as soon as 1 January 2024 with a gradual expansion which will continue until 2026 and potentially beyond. The first data which will be available will be that which is reported under the Transparency Directive, the Prospective Regulation, the Short Selling Regulation, the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation and the Taxonomy Regulation.
 |
|
The Commission adopted and transmitted to the Council a proposal for the regulation establishing the European Single Access Point (ESAP) on 25 November 2021. The establishing regulation is accompanied by an amending omnibus regulation and an amending omnibus directive – two pieces of legislation that amend a number of acts, to take account of the ESAP.
On 27 November 2023 the Council adopted the relevant regulation, which closes the decision-making procedure. The regulation will be published in the Official Journal and enter into force 20 days after its publication.
The ESAP platform is expected to be available from summer 2027 and gradually phased in. This phasing-in is to ensure that European regulations and directives will enter into the scope of ESAP within four years, in order of priority.