European Commission Launches MiFID II Consultation

Feedback period: 17 February 2020 – 20 April 2020 (midnight Brussels time)
Topic : Banking and financial services

Target audience

All citizens and organisations are welcome to contribute to this consultation. For the more technical part of the consultation, views are welcome, in particular, from Member States, national competent authorities, the European Supervisory Authorities, consumer organisations and market participants (such as data service providers, trading venues, investment firms, asset managers, etc), FinTech organisations, EU businesses (issuers whether large or small, companies, including non-listed ones, start-ups).

Why we are consulting

MiFID II and MiFIR started to apply in January 2018, bringing significant improvements to the functioning and transparency of EU financial markets. To assess the overall functioning of the regime after two years of application, MiFID II/MiFIR require that the Commission presents the Parliament and Council with a report on the operation of the new framework, together with a legislative proposal for reform, if deemed necessary. This consultation therefore seeks to gather evidence from stakeholders, and more generally from EU citizens, on areas that would merit targeted adjustments. In addition, the Commission would welcome indications on how issues should be prioritised in a potential reform of the MiFID II/MiFIR rulebook.

Responding to the questionnaire

You can contribute to this consultation by filling in the online questionnaire. 

Questionnaires are available in some or all official EU languages. You can submit your responses in any official EU language.

For reasons of transparency, organisations and businesses taking part in public consultations are asked to register in the EU’s Transparency Register.

Source: European Commission

Tim Cave, analyst at consultancy Tabb Group:

A lot of this was signalled in ESMA consultation a couple of weeks back. But gets really interesting from p.54 onwards for the EC's views on research unbundling. One option suggested is to allow bundled payments again, for SME research only… https://t.co/mzV5EbdEBQ

— Tim Cave (@_TimCave) February 17, 2020

Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright’s financial services blog Regulation tomorrow highlighted priority areas for review which include: 

“The establishment of an EU consolidated tape (Qs 7 – 30.1)

Under this sub-section, the Commission seeks stakeholder views on the current state of play, i.e. the absence of consolidated tape (CT) under the MiFID II / MiFIR framework. This includes reasons why a CT has not emerged, availability and price or market data and use cases for CT. 

Research unbundling rules and SME research coverage (Qs 58 – 68.1)

Noting that the rules governing unbundling of research were designed to ensure that the cost of research funded by clients is not linked to, among others, the volume or value of other services, the Commission asks for stakeholders’ overall assessment of the effect of unbundling on the quantity, quality and pricing of research. The Commission also asks for stakeholder views on increasing the production of research on SMEs, including alternative ways of its financing and ways to promote access to such research.”

Sean Tuffy, head of regulatory intelligence, custody & fund services at Citi: