The European Commission has announced a delay to the implementation date of MiFID II, granting national competent authorities and market participants one additional year to comply with the rules set out in the directive. The proposed new deadline is now 3 January 2018.
The Commission proposed the delay following the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) concerns with regard to the tight timeframe to implement the directive and to build the necessary IT infrastructure systems. ESMA must collect data from circa 300 trading venues on about 15 million financial instruments, and work closely with national competent authorities and the trading venues themselves. However, ESMA informed the Commission that neither competent authorities, nor market participants, would have the necessary systems ready by 3 January 2017, the original operational date. In light of these technical implementation challenges an extension was considered necessary.
The extension will not however impact on the timeline for adoption of the Level II implementing measures under MiFID II/MiFIR and the Commission is proceeding with their adoption irrespective of the extended deadline.
Contributed by Audrey Giles.
