Articles

  • EMIR Active Account Requirement: ESMA’s First Effectiveness Report

    On 6 July 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published the first stage of its effectiveness assessment of the EMIR Active Account Requirement, together with the first annual report of the Joint Monitoring Mechanism. The rule applies to financial and non-financial EU counterparties that are subject to the EMIR clearing obligation and meet…

  • ECB AI Cybersecurity Letter: The 31 October 2026 JST Action Plan

    On 7 July 2026, the Chair of the ECB Supervisory Board, Claudia Buch, wrote to the CEO of every significant institution under a letter numbered SSM-2026-0301 and titled “Addressing AI-enabled cybersecurity threats”. The ECB AI cybersecurity letter does one operationally concrete thing behind its strategic language: it gives each directly supervised bank until 31 October…

  • CRD6 Third-Country Branch Authorisation: The 11 January 2027 Deadline

    A non-EU bank that wants to keep taking deposits, lending, or issuing guarantees in an EU Member State through a branch now has a hard date to work toward: 11 January 2027. On 7 July 2026 the European Banking Authority published its final Guidelines on the authorisation of third-country branches (EBA/GL/2026/08), and they settle the…

  • OTC Derivatives Consolidated Tape: ESMA Names the First Provider

    On 6 July 2026 the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) selected Etrading Software (Netherlands) B.V. to run the EU’s OTC derivatives consolidated tape, naming it the consolidated tape provider for over-the-counter derivatives under the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR). It is the third and last asset class under Article 27da of MiFIR to…

  • EU Taxonomy Disclosure Simplification: The 12 August ESMA Deadline

    On 1 July 2026 the three European Supervisory Authorities each opened a consultation on rewriting the Key Performance Indicators that firms disclose under Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy Regulation. ESMA published a Consultation Paper, the European Banking Authority a Discussion Paper, and EIOPA a consultation on the insurance side. All three close on 12…

  • CRR Article 430a Immovable Property Loss Data: The 2025 Hard Test

    On 6 July 2026 the European Banking Authority published its 2025 immovable property loss data: the annual dataset of losses and exposures for residential and commercial property across the EU and EEA. For a standardised-approach credit-risk reporting team, that dataset does real work. It is one of the inputs that decides whether the preferential risk…

  • CSSF ICAAP and ILAAP: Filing Under Circulars 07/301 and 20/753

    Every spring, a Luxembourg reporting team assembles a document that no COREP or FINREP template captures: the institution’s own account of whether it holds enough capital and enough liquidity to survive the risks it actually runs. That account is the ICAAP and ILAAP file, and in Luxembourg its rules sit in Circular CSSF 07/301. The…

  • Revised ESRS: The 60% Datapoint Cut Facing CSRD Reporters

    On 3 July 2026 the European Commission adopted two delegated acts that rewrite how the European Sustainability Reporting Standards work: a revised set of ESRS and a new voluntary standard for smaller companies. The revised ESRS cut the number of mandatory datapoints by more than 60% and the total number of datapoints by more than…