EUROPEAN UNION: ESMA Updates Q&A’s for Benchmarks in Third Country Issues

Thursday November 9 2017

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published updated Questions and Answers  (Q&As) regarding the implementation of the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).

The Q&A’s include two new answers regarding the following topics:

• Scope of the BMR: Application of the BMR outside the EU; and
• Transitional provisions: Transitional provisions applicable to third country benchmarks.

On the Scope of BMR, ESMA states that the Regulation does not apply to benchmarks that are exclusively used outside the Union. Therefore, an administrator providing a benchmark exclusively to users outside the Union would have to comply with any applicable third country regimes with respect to benchmarks.

Furthermore, on the issue of Transitional Provisions, ESMA has sought to clarify the meaning of the term “where the benchmark is already used in the Union” in Article 51(5) of the BMR. This should be interpreted as “where the benchmark is already used in the Union on or before 1 January 2020”.

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