DEA provider must have access to information on its DEA clients, irrespective of DEA clients’ jurisdiction or their authorisation status - ESMA underlined this once more in an interpretation of 28 March 2018.

Positions in an OTC contract which is economically equivalent to more than one exchange-traded derivative (ETD) contract traded on the EU trading venue are to be reported to any of the National Competent Authorities (NCAs) of the trading venues where the ETD contract is traded (ESMA’s clarification of 28 March 2018).

The inherent condition is that those ETD contracts do not qualify as the same derivative contract in accordance with Article 5(1) of RTS 21.

The EU aligns its OTC collateral framework for physically-settled forwards and swaps with other major jurisdictions.

Do you know which extra-EU transactions must be made public through the Approved Publication Arrangements (APAs) as from 3 January 2018 under the MiFID II post-trade transparency?

The updated ESMA's Q&As of 1 February 2017 include a new answer in relation to transition to the revised technical standards on EMIR reporting, consisting of:

- Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/105 of 19 October 2016 amending Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1247/2012 laying down implementing technical standards with regard to the format and frequency of trade reports to trade repositories according to Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories;

- Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/104 of 19 October 2016 amending Delegated Regulation (EU) No 148/2013 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories with regard to regulatory technical standards on the minimum details of the data to be reported to trade repositories.

Amended reporting standards will apply from 1 November 2017, except for Article 1(5) of the ITS (delaying the backloading requirement) which will apply from 10 February 2017.

The Q&As clarify that:

- the reporting entities are not obliged to update all the outstanding trades upon the application date of the revised technical standards and

- they are required to submit the reports related to the old outstanding trades only when a reportable event takes place (e.g. when the trade is modified).

Furthermore, the Q&As explain how those reports will be validated by the trade repositories.

ESMA's Questions and Answers on EMIR (Q&As) are non-legislative, and periodically-updated piece of knowledge about required format of EMIR reporting.

On 31 January 2017 ESMA explained that the calculations for the purposes of the definition of systematic internaliser under MiFID II should be carried out at the legal entity level and not at the group level (Questions and Answers on MiFID II and MiFIR transparency topics, 31 January 2017, ESMA70-872942901-35).

Moreover, according to ESMA for EU investment firms operating branches in the Union, the activity of those branches would need to be consolidated for the purpose of the systematic internaliser calculations.