EUROPEAN UNION: ECC to Introduce Direct Clearing Participant Membership for Spot Markets

Tuesday September 6 2016

European Commodity Clearing (ECC) is the central clearing house for energy and related products in Europe. In its capacity as the central counterparty ECC assumes clearing as well as physical and financial settlement of transactions concluded on CEGH Gas Exchange of the Vienna Stock Exchange, EEX, EPEX SPOT, HUPX, Gaspoint Nordic, NOREXECO, Powernext, Power Exchange Central Europe (PXE) and SEEPEX, or registered for clearing on these exchanges.

European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC) has introduced a new membership model – the Direct Clearing Participant Model (DCPM).

The new model will allow trading participants to have direct access to trading and clearing of spot markets without the requirement of a clearing member which enables a greater number of players, in particular the smaller participants, access to wholesale spot markets and further increasing depth of liquidity.

Initially, the model will be available to the Dutch and Belgian EPEX power spot markets, with France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria scheduled to follow by the end of 2016. Furthermore the model will also be extended to the natural gas spot markets operated by Powernext in 2017.

In order to ensure a standardised process, all payment transactions will be processed via an ECC approved settlement bank, which unlike the traditional clearing member model, does not provide a guarantee for trading participants. The first settlement bank which was approved by ECC is ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

Click on the link above for further details