|
Regulatory Policy Overview From the perspective of the European Union, 2025 has been characterised by the Savings and Investment Union initiative (SIU), envisaging numerous potentially impactful amendments to the EU’s capital markets regulatory landscape. This is, in fact, the third layer of this project, formerly known as the Capital Markets Union (CMU). ICMA has given a comprehensive response to the EU Commission on this in June. In terms of content, the SIU-MISP package of legislative proposals was published by the Commission on 4 December, focusing on the financial supervisory architecture in addition to post-trading, the buy side, and digital finance. Its goals include strengthening EU-level supervision, giving ESMA direct oversight of significant trading venues, CSDs, CCPs, CASPs, and coordinating supervision of large asset managers. Moreover, it aims to facilitate innovation, especially the use of DLT and tokenisation, helped by the elimination of outdated definitions and barriers in SFD/SFR as well as sectoral legislation. Furthermore, it strives to enhance post-trade safety and legal certainty, including harmonised settlement finality moments, insolvency treatment, and conflict-of-law rules (SFR). The RPC is also monitoring developments in other jurisdictions, to be aware of similarities and differences. Avoiding further fragmentation between the EU and the UK rules are a priority for ICMA. On the financial education side, ICMA organised a Eurobond event together with the two ICSDs on 24 September at ICMA’s Brussels premises and on 10 October 2025 for ESMA in Paris. These were opportunities to showcase how this product boosts the objectives of the SIU, including the launch of ICMA’s bond market policy mind map and ecosystem. Further sessions are envisaged in Q1 2026 for IOSCO in Madrid and local EU markets for example in the Netherlands to the Central Bank and National Regulator. In addition, ICMA has set up a new series of regular political ICMA Brussels roundtables, also hosted at ICMA’s Brussels premises. A launch edition took place on 30 October 2025 featuring ICMA’s work on secondary market strategic developments and bond market data reports. These are recorded, posted online, and will be continued on a regular basis throughout 2026, each focusing on a different aspect of ICMA’s work and priorities, such as Sustainable Finance and Securitisation. The ICMA Secretariat is further supporting IOSCO’s working group on Market Fragmentation, whose task is to work on greater harmonisation among jurisdictions worldwide. In 2025, this group has been preparing a survey report, covering priority matters such as banks’ capital rules, EU and UK Benchmark reform, CCP’s access to central bank deposit accounts, digital assets and market access regimes. ICMA’s Regulatory Policy team has prepared and accompanied ICMA’s participation at the Eurofi event in Copenhagen from 17-19 September 2025, including participating in priority bilateral meetings with high-level decision makers, members and the financial community. The next Eurofi event will take place in Cyprus from 25-27 March 2026 and ICMA plans to hold the RPC in Nikosia on 24 March 2026. These activities are complemented by meetings with financial supervisory authorities and thematic meetings with various decision makers on certain policy fields and topics, such as sustainable finance or digitalisation and FinTech. ICMA’s MPRP team is preparing the annual Brussels/Paris meetings with ICMA’s CEO and C-level policy makers on 20-22 January 2025. Contact: brussels@icmagroup.org |
|
