EMIR Article 7d Reporting: The New Third-Country CCP Return

ESMA opened a consultation on 18 August 2026 on the technical standards that turn EMIR Article 7d into a working return, and comments close on 12 October 2026. Article 7d, added to EMIR by Regulation (EU) 2024/2987 (EMIR 3), requires clearing members and clients that clear contracts through a central counterparty recognised under Article 25 to report their clearing activity at that third-country CCP once a year. The Level 1 obligation has been on the statute book since EMIR 3 became applicable on 24 December 2024. ESMA’s 11 December 2025 public statement says that first reporting on 2025 data is expected to be submitted together with the 2026 reporting cycle following implementation of the necessary Level 2 measures; the detailed content and format remain in the draft RTS and ITS in consultation paper ESMA12-2121844265-6008.

The practical shape of Article 7d reporting is narrower than it first looks. ESMA has built the draft standards around a single principle: reporting entities should not have to file information that is already available to ESMA or national competent authorities through existing regimes. Most of the derivatives picture is already carried by EMIR Article 9 reporting and, for repos and securities lending, by SFTR. The draft RTS are targeted at identified data gaps, but the firm-facing fields do not map one-for-one to those gaps: where average-value reporting is required, Table 2 may also require the corresponding instrument-type information so that the report can be completed consistently. So the work for the coming months is a scoping exercise. You need to identify which gap-filling data points your firm will actually have to source and submit, and by when, against clearing activity that the existing regimes already largely capture.

Three populations should read the detail closely: EU clearing members of recognised third-country CCPs, EU clients that clear through those CCPs, and the Union parent undertakings that will file on a consolidated basis for groups under consolidated supervision in the Union. Under ESMA’s draft transitional mechanism, the first submission would include separate reports for each unreported calendar year starting with 2025. ESMA’s December 2025 supervisory statement had already indicated that first reporting on 2025 data was expected after implementation of the necessary Level 2 measures.

Related reading: EMIR Reporting Explained

The dates that anchor the Article 7d calendar

Article 7d applies at Level 1, but the first filing date is not fixed in Level 1. ESMA’s draft RTS propose that the first submission fall on the first annual reporting date no earlier than six months after the RTS Regulation enters into force, so the first-cycle filing date remains contingent on the adopted Level 2 text and its entry into force.

• 18 August 2026: ESMA publishes the consultation paper on EMIR Article 7d reporting (ESMA12-2121844265-6008), with a reply form.
• 12 October 2026: the consultation closes. ESMA will consider all comments received by that date.
• Q4 2026: ESMA expects to publish its final report, containing the final draft RTS and ITS to be sent to the European Commission.
• 25 December 2025: the Level 1 date by which ESMA was to submit the draft RTS and ITS to the Commission. ESMA’s Board of Supervisors reprioritised the mandate in 2025 and moved this work into 2026.
• Calendar year 2025: ESMA’s draft RTS use 2025 as the first reference year. Under the proposed transitional mechanism, the first submission would include a separate report for each calendar year not previously reported, starting from 2025.
• Proposed first submission date: under ESMA’s draft RTS, the first submission would occur on the first reporting date falling no earlier than six months after the RTS Regulation enters into force. The draft RTS propose annual reporting thereafter, no later than the last business day of January and covering the preceding calendar year.

ESMA foreshadowed this sequencing in its public statement of 11 December 2025 on upcoming reporting obligations under EMIR 3, stating that first Article 7d reporting on 2025 data was expected to be submitted together with the 2026 reporting cycle following implementation of the necessary Level 2 measures.

Where Article 7d sits, and why it is not the active account return

EMIR 3 introduced several new monitoring tools at once, and Article 7d is the one aimed squarely at visibility over third-country clearing. Recital 17 of Regulation (EU) 2024/2987 frames the purpose plainly: competent authorities need information on the clearing activity that clearing members and clients undertake in recognised third-country CCPs, and the reported information should distinguish securities transactions, derivative transactions on regulated markets and OTC derivative transactions.

The Level 1 text lists five elements for the annual report: the type of financial or non-financial instruments cleared; the average values cleared over one year, per Union currency and per asset class; the amount of margins collected; the default fund contributions; and the largest payment obligation. Firms report to their national competent authority, and the authority then transmits the information promptly to ESMA and to the Joint Monitoring Mechanism, the body set up under EMIR 3 to monitor Union exposures to CCPs.

Article 7d and the active account requirement (AAR) are distinct instruments with different triggers. The AAR, reported under Article 7b, obliges certain market participants to hold and use an active account at an EU CCP for specified contracts, with its own six-monthly reporting rhythm and a first submission expected on 31 July 2026. Article 7d asks a separate question: how much clearing are you doing at recognised third-country CCPs, and in what shape. A firm can be caught by one, both, or neither. If you are mapping obligations, keep the two workstreams and their templates apart; our note on the ESMA active account requirement reporting templates covers the AAR side.

Who has to report, and where the perimeter stops

Article 7d reaches two categories of entity: clearing members of CCPs recognised under Article 25, and clients that clear contracts through those CCPs. The term client takes its EMIR meaning under Article 2(15): an undertaking with a contractual relationship with a clearing member that enables it to clear its transactions with the CCP. ESMA sought European Commission clarification on the scope, and the Commission confirmed the reading that follows.

The obligation applies to both clearing members and clients whether or not the client has any direct exposure to the CCP itself. What it does not reach is the next layer down. Clients of clients, the indirect clients in an indirect clearing chain, do not meet the Article 2(15) definition and fall outside Article 7d. If your firm provides indirect clearing services, your own clients are not separate Article 7d reporters through you.

Consolidation changes who holds the pen. Where a clearing member or client is part of a group under consolidated supervision in the Union, the Union parent undertaking files a single consolidated report for the group. Here is the point that catches groups by surprise: that consolidated report captures the clearing activity of non-EU subsidiaries too. Those subsidiaries are not themselves addressees of the obligation and would not file individually, yet their clearing at recognised third-country CCPs is pulled into the parent’s report. ESMA itself flags that this consolidated design can make the obligation more onerous for EU-headquartered groups than for standalone EU entities, which is one reason the level of consolidation is a live consultation question.

What is in scope beyond derivatives

Most of EMIR 3 operates on derivative contracts. Article 7d is deliberately broader. It applies to financial instruments and non-financial instruments cleared at a recognised third-country CCP, which means the scope runs past what EMIR Article 9 captures. On ESMA’s proposed classification, financial instruments split into securities, derivatives (with a distinction between OTC and exchange-traded), and securities financing transactions. Non-financial instruments are confined to spot contracts and crypto-assets other than derivatives.

That non-financial category sounds expansive and turns out to be thin. The reference to non-financial instruments has to be read against the clearing services for which third-country CCPs are actually recognised under Article 25, and in practice very few non-financial instruments are cleared. Spot contracts and non-derivative crypto-assets are the realistic universe, and only where such instruments are cleared through a recognised CCP. For the derivatives and SFT strands, the scope aligns with the instruments already known to SFTR reporting and EMIR, which is what lets ESMA reuse so much of the existing data.

The reuse principle: a gap-fill built on existing reporting

The design decision that most affects your build is ESMA’s refusal to duplicate. Article 7d(2) directs ESMA to specify the reporting content while taking into account existing reporting channels and the information already available under the current framework, including the Article 9 obligation. ESMA ran a mapping and gap analysis across EMIR Article 9, SFTR, MiFIR Article 26 transaction reporting, and the annual data request it addresses to the supervisory authorities of Tier 1 third-country CCPs. The draft RTS then specify content only for the elements those sources cannot already supply at the granularity Article 7d demands.

Supervisors were blunt in the preparatory work. ESMA reports that the feedback was consistent across jurisdictions: the Article 7d information was not considered necessary for supervisory purposes, existing EMIR Article 9 reporting already meets supervisory objectives including for third-country clearing, and a parallel obligation would duplicate reporting and impose disproportionate burden for limited additional value. ESMA kept the mandate because it is set in Level 1, and because the data can still support a broader read on Union dependencies on third-country CCPs in the current geopolitical context. The upshot for reporting teams is favourable: the standards are drawn to make you file the minimum that closes the gaps.

The gap map is not uniform. It depends on the reporting entity, the clearing arrangement, and the instrument. The clean cases are EU clients clearing through EU clearing members and clearing members themselves, where Article 9 and, for repos and securities lending, SFTR already carry the type of instruments and much of the values. The residual gap concentrates in a few places: financial instruments other than derivatives and SFTs, non-financial instruments in scope, and clearing done through non-EU clearing members that are outside an EU-supervised group. The single largest gap ESMA identifies is non-EU clients that form part of EU-supervised groups, where average values and, in some chains, margins are simply not available in current reporting.

The data points ESMA proposes firms would file

Strip the gap analysis down and the draft RTS ask reporting populations to supply, at most, three of the five Level 1 elements: the type of instruments cleared, the average values cleared per Union currency and asset class, and the amount of margins. Which of the three you owe depends on your position in the chain. The draft reporting fields do not map one-for-one to the individual cells in ESMA’s gap analysis. Draft Article 2 reports instrument type and average values together, while draft Article 3 reports initial margin at recognised-third-country-CCP level rather than by instrument category:

• EU clients, and clearing members established in the Union or belonging to an EU-supervised group, would report instrument type and average values for financial instruments other than derivatives and SFTs and for non-financial instruments.
• Non-EU clients belonging to an EU-supervised group would report instrument type and average values across all in-scope financial and non-financial instruments.
• Where an EU client, or a non-EU client belonging to an EU-supervised group, clears through a non-EU clearing member that is not part of an EU-supervised group, draft Article 3 would additionally require initial margin, including applicable add-ons, at recognised-third-country-CCP level.

Two Level 1 elements drop out of firm reporting entirely. Default fund contributions and the largest payment obligation are held only at clearing-member level; a client has no direct default fund contribution and no direct payment obligation to the CCP, so ESMA does not expect clients to report them. Even for clearing members, these elements are not available under existing EMIR reporting. ESMA says they may be retrievable from its annual Tier 1 CCP data request, subject to that dataset’s limitations. The request includes default fund contributions for relevant clearing-member accounts and estimated largest payment obligations that could arise in extreme but plausible market conditions following the default of at least the two largest clearing members and their affiliates. So the draft standards leave (d) and (e) off the firm-facing template. That is a meaningful scoping decision to reflect in any build estimate.

Two methodology traps: Union-currency values and multi-currency margin conversion

The calculation rules are where an Article 7d build can quietly go wrong, because the two headline metrics use opposite currency treatments.

Under ESMA’s proposed methodology, average values cleared would be calculated from aggregate month-end positions over the twelve-month calendar year. Positions would be aggregated by CCP recognised under Article 25, asset class and Union currency and then averaged over the year. Derivatives would use gross notional amount outstanding. For SFTs, which for this purpose are limited to repos and securities lending and borrowing transactions, repos would use principal amount on the value date and securities lending and borrowing would use the value of securities on loan. Non-derivative debt securities would use principal amount outstanding and equity-type instruments would use market value. The proposed average values would remain in the relevant Union currency of denomination without conversion into euro.

Margins run the other way. ESMA proposes to base Article 7d(1)(c) on initial margin, including applicable add-ons, rather than variation margin, on the view that initial margin is a more stable indicator of portfolio size and risk and that variation margin is too volatile to average meaningfully. Initial margin is reported as the average of month-end levels over the twelve months, but where it is denominated in more than one currency the amounts are converted into euro at the applicable ECB end-of-month exchange rate, summed and divided by twelve. Margin is also reported at a coarser cut than values, aggregated per recognised third-country CCP instead of per currency or asset class. So under ESMA’s proposal the annual report keeps average values in the relevant Union currency of denomination. Where initial margin is denominated in more than one currency, the margin amounts are converted into a single EUR figure per recognised third-country CCP. The consultation does not expressly specify a conversion rule for initial margin denominated in a single non-EUR currency.

One point here is ESMA’s reading, and it is worth flagging as interpretation. Article 7d(1)(c) refers to margins collected, but ESMA reads it as margins posted, namely margins posted by clearing members to the CCP and by clients to their clearing members. ESMA attributes the collected wording to an earlier drafting phase, when the obligation was going to sit on the third-country CCPs themselves before it shifted to EU entities and the verb was never updated. If your source systems distinguish margin posted from margin received, take the posted side.

Consolidation granularity is still open

For groups filing under Article 7d(1)(b), the Level 1 text requires consolidated reporting by the Union parent but says nothing about the internal breakdown. ESMA weighed three options: full consolidation with no entity distinction, consolidation split between EU and non-EU entities, and a full entity-level breakdown. It proposes the middle option as the baseline, so that a group report would show clearing activity divided into EU and non-EU entity buckets. Full consolidation mirrors the approach used for the active account requirement under Article 7b, as specified in Article 7(2) of the AAR RTS, but ESMA judges it too blunt to reveal how much of a group’s third-country clearing runs through its non-EU arms. The full entity-level option is rejected as disproportionate, particularly given data-availability problems for non-EU subsidiaries. This is Question 9 in the consultation, and groups with material non-EU clearing have a direct interest in the answer, because the EU-versus-non-EU split determines how much intra-group structure they have to expose.

Proposed format: CSV, LEIs and ISO codes

ESMA’s draft implementing technical standards set the proposed wrapper. They would identify reporting entities and third-country CCPs by Legal Entity Identifier under ISO 17442, currencies by ISO 4217 codes, and instruments using a classification aligned to the clearing services for which each CCP is recognised. ESMA proposes CSV as the submission format, on the reasoning that an annual return with a limited field set does not justify XML, which it considers disproportionately costly to build and, for some competent authorities, to ingest. As an alternative to the bespoke instrument classification, ESMA asks whether firms would prefer the ISO 10962 CFI code already used in EMIR and SFTR, while noting that CFI is more granular, is not always readily available, and does not cover non-financial instruments such as spot contracts and crypto-assets. The format questions look administrative, but the instrument-classification choice feeds straight into whether you can reuse existing EMIR and SFTR mappings or have to build a new one.

What to put in a consultation response before 12 October

ESMA asks eleven questions, and the ones with operational teeth are weighted toward cost and feasibility over legal drafting. Question 1 tests the gap analysis itself. Questions 2 and 3 cover the annual last-business-day-of-January timing and the transitional catch-up. Questions 5 to 8 probe the average-values and initial-margin methodologies, including whether quarter-end margin observations would be less burdensome than month-end. Questions 9 and 10 go to the consolidation split, and Question 11 to the CSV format. ESMA is explicit that it wants evidence on implementation costs: data sourcing, reconciliation effort, systems development, and dependencies on clearing members and service providers. A response that quantifies the effort to reconstruct margin posted from collateral portfolios, or to source non-EU subsidiary data for a consolidated report, is the kind of input that shapes the final calibration. Responses go in via the reply form on the ESMA consultation page.

For teams that already run EMIR and SFTR pipelines, the honest preparation step is a data-lineage check, well ahead of any template build. Confirm you can identify trades cleared at each recognised third-country CCP, tie them to the right collateral portfolio or UTI, and pull month-end positions by currency and asset class. Under the draft RTS, an EU client clearing through a non-EU clearing member outside an EU-supervised group would report instrument type and average values under Article 2 only for financial instruments other than derivatives and SFTs and for non-financial instruments, while Article 3 would additionally require initial margin at recognised-third-country-CCP level. For a non-EU client within an EU-supervised group using such a clearing member, Article 2 would extend instrument-type and average-value reporting across all in-scope instruments. That work does not wait for the final RTS; 2025 is already a completed reference year and, under ESMA’s draft transitional mechanism, its data would be included in the first submission.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Article 7d reporting live now, or can we wait for the final standards?

The Level 1 obligation applies. ESMA’s 11 December 2025 public statement states that first reporting on 2025 data is expected to be submitted together with the 2026 reporting cycle following implementation of the necessary Level 2 measures. The statement does not suspend the Level 1 obligation or state that filing before then is legally impossible. ESMA’s draft transitional mechanism would bring 2025 into the first submission, so firms should preserve or be able to reconstruct the 2025 data while the Level 2 measures are finalised.

We only clear through an EU clearing member at an EU CCP. Are we in scope at all?

Article 7d bites on clearing at CCPs recognised under Article 25, which are third-country CCPs. Clearing at an EU-authorised CCP is not third-country clearing and is not what Article 7d captures. If none of your clearing runs through a recognised third-country CCP, you have nothing to report under this Article, though you should still confirm the recognition status of every CCP you use.

How does Article 7d interact with our existing EMIR Article 9 reporting?

It reuses it. ESMA’s design sources the derivatives picture, and much of the values and margin detail, from Article 9 data you already report to a trade repository. The draft RTS are targeted at gaps in existing data, but the firm-facing fields do not map one-for-one to those gaps: Article 2 reports instrument type and average values together, while Article 3 reports initial margin at recognised-third-country-CCP level where the draft scope requires it. It supplements the existing pipeline instead of replacing it.

Do our non-EU subsidiaries file their own Article 7d reports?

No. Non-EU subsidiaries are not addressees of the obligation. But if they belong to a group under consolidated supervision in the Union, their clearing at recognised third-country CCPs is included in the consolidated report filed by the Union parent. Under ESMA’s proposed baseline, that report would show EU and non-EU entity activity in separate buckets.

Which margin figure do we report, and in what currency?

ESMA proposes initial margin, including add-ons, reported per recognised third-country CCP as an average of month-end levels over the year. Where margin is in more than one currency it is converted to euro at ECB end-of-month rates before averaging. This differs from average values cleared, which stay in their native Union currency and are broken down by currency and asset class.

Are default fund contributions and the largest payment obligation part of the firm return?

Not under the draft standards. Those two elements are held at clearing-member level. ESMA says they may be retrievable from its annual Tier 1 CCP data request, subject to dataset limitations; the draft RTS themselves specify firm reporting only for instrument type, average values and margins.

What if the RTS enter into force partway through a year?

Under ESMA’s draft RTS, the first submission would fall on the first reporting date no earlier than six months after entry into force and would include separate reports for every unreported calendar year starting from 2025. Under the draft mechanism, if the RTS Regulation entered into force in May, the first submission would fall on the following January reporting date.

Related Articles

• EMIR Reporting Explained: how the Article 9 trade-repository reporting chain works for counterparties, clearing members and CCPs.
• ESMA Active Account Requirement Reporting Templates: the separate AAR reporting under Article 7b, its templates and its 31 July 2026 first submission.
• EMIR Active Account Reporting: CSSF and Article 7b: how the active account report is submitted and what it covers at national level.
• SFTR Reporting Explained: the securities financing transaction reporting regime that feeds part of the Article 7d data set.
• EMIR 3 Clearing Obligation Thresholds and the Active Account: the wider EMIR 3 clearing package that Article 7d sits within.

Key Takeaways

• EMIR Article 7d, from Regulation (EU) 2024/2987, requires clearing members and clients to report annual clearing activity at CCPs recognised under Article 25; ESMA’s draft RTS and ITS are out for consultation until 12 October 2026.
• Reporting goes to the competent authority, which transmits the information to ESMA and the Joint Monitoring Mechanism; under ESMA’s draft RTS, the proposed annual deadline is no later than the last business day of January for the preceding calendar year.
• Under ESMA’s draft transitional mechanism, the first submission would include separate reports starting with calendar year 2025 and would fall on the first reporting date no earlier than six months after the RTS Regulation enters into force.
• Under ESMA’s draft RTS, existing reporting data would be reused to target identified gaps, but the firm-facing fields do not map one-for-one to those gaps: instrument type and average values are reported together in Table 2, while initial margin is reported at recognised-third-country-CCP level where the draft scope requires it.
• Average values stay in the relevant Union currency of denomination. Where initial margin is denominated in more than one currency, the amounts are converted to euro at the applicable ECB end-of-month rates and reported as a single aggregate per recognised third-country CCP.
• Default fund contributions and the largest payment obligation are not included in the draft firm return; ESMA says those elements may be retrievable from its annual Tier 1 CCP data request, subject to dataset limitations.
• Indirect clients are out of scope; Union parents file consolidated reports that include non-EU subsidiaries, with an EU versus non-EU split proposed as the baseline.
• Article 7d is distinct from the active account requirement under Article 7b; keep the two obligations and their deadlines separate.

Sources and References

• ESMA, Consultation on the reporting framework under EMIR for clearing activity at recognised third-country CCPs: esma.europa.eu consultation page (open 18 August to 12 October 2026).
• ESMA, Consultation Paper EMIR Article 7d Reporting, ESMA12-2121844265-6008, 18 August 2026: consultation paper (PDF).
• Regulation (EU) 2024/2987 (EMIR 3), amending Regulation (EU) No 648/2012: EUR-Lex 32024R2987.
• Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 (EMIR): EUR-Lex 32012R0648.
• Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/1855 (EMIR reporting details RTS): EUR-Lex 32022R1855.
• Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/356 (SFTR reporting details RTS): EUR-Lex 32019R0356.
• ESMA, Public Statement on upcoming reporting obligations under EMIR 3, ESMA91-1505572268-4536, 11 December 2025: public statement (PDF).
• Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/305, Articles 7 and 10, on AAR reporting frequency and submission arrangements: EUR-Lex; ESMA, ESMA releases reporting templates and instructions for the Active Account Requirement, 13 April 2026: esma.europa.eu.

What to do before the consultation closes

The near-term action is a data-lineage exercise and, if the calibration matters to your group, a consultation response, not yet a template build. Confirm you can identify trades cleared at each recognised third-country CCP, tie them to the right collateral portfolio or UTI, and pull month-end positions by currency and asset class. For an EU client clearing through a non-EU clearing member outside an EU-supervised group, the draft RTS would add instrument-type and average-value reporting for financial instruments other than derivatives and SFTs and for non-financial instruments, together with initial-margin reporting at recognised-third-country-CCP level. For a non-EU client within an EU-supervised group using such a clearing member, the proposed instrument-type and average-value scope would extend across all in-scope instruments. Then decide whether to file evidence with ESMA on Questions 5 to 10 by 12 October 2026, while the reference year keeps running underneath you.

Disclaimer: The information on RegReportingDesk.com is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, tax, or compliance advice. Always consult your compliance officer, legal counsel, or the relevant supervisory authority for guidance specific to your institution.