• Leading financial industry associations representing European exchange participants today set out key principles for effective outage management.

A group of leading financial industry associations are urging European exchanges to fully and consistently implement outage protocols, following a series of significant trading disruptions since 2020 that have impacted the orderly functioning of equity markets.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), the European Funds and Management Association (EFAMA) and the FIA European Principal Traders Association (FIA EPTA), representing a significant share of European exchange participants, are calling on stock exchanges to take necessary steps to ensure they are fully equipped to follow market outage protocols.

While the joint trade associations acknowledge that outages are inevitable as markets rely increasingly on electronification and automation, we stress that their impact can and must be minimised through robust, transparent, and consistently applied procedures.

Regulators and market participants have worked hard in recent years to set clear standards for managing outages. The associations note significant progress, including the ESMA Final Report on Market Outages (May 2023), the FCA Policy Statement on Improving Equity Secondary Markets (May 2023), and the Plato Partnership Proposed Standards (November 2024). Exchanges have broadly committed to aligning their procedures with these regulatory and industry-driven initiatives.

However, the associations warn that the usefulness of these protocols is only realised if they are accurately executed during outages. Recent incidents have shown gaps in adherence, creating confusion, unnecessary risk, and further disruption for investors and issuers. The most recent outage in July 2025 underscores how disruptive trading interruptions can be for investors, markets, and the wider economy.

To support more resilient markets, the associations outline four key principles:

• Order status clarity – Exchanges must provide accurate and consistent information on market status, instrument prices, orders, and trades, with a clear “outage/closed” status to avoid misleading participants.
• Regular updates – Exchanges should communicate at least every 15 minutes during an outage, simultaneously to all participants, and in machine-readable formats that can be integrated into trading systems.
• Reopening procedures – Reopening times should be communicated at least 15 minutes in advance on “round” time increments, with prior consultation with participants and consideration of an order book purge if necessary
• Closing auctions – Exchanges should give 30 minutes’ notice on whether a closing auction will be held, with clear fallback arrangements to provide closing prices if systems remain down.

The associations highlight that confidence in Europe’s capital markets depends on transparency and reliability. Adhering to established outage protocols is critical to safeguarding investor trust, maintaining orderly markets, and supporting Europe’s competitiveness.

Source: AFME