The PTSC-CWG is expected to provide technical assistance and advice to the PTSC in all aspects of its work, and in particular in the development of technical standards or guidance in relation to the relevant legislations within the area of competence of the PTSC. It is also expected to assist the PTSC in assessing the potential impact of proposed technical standards and guidance.

The PTSC undertakes ESMA’s work relating to post-trading, focusing on the one hand on clearing and risk mitigation requirements for financial and non-financial counterparties entering into OTC derivative contracts as well as the related post trading services, and on the other hand on settlement as well as on requirements applying to CSDs as financial market infrastructures.

The PTSC is responsible for preparing ESMA’s technical advice, technical standards, reports, opinions, guidelines, Q&As and other guidance related to the implementation of post trading legislations, in particular CSDR and EMIR.

Interested experts are invited to send their applications to ESMA by 8 March 2021.

The report includes an analysis based on waivers for equity and equity-like instruments for which ESMA issued an opinion to the competent authority in the period between 1 January and 31 December 2019. It also includes an overview of the deferral regime for equity and equity-like instruments applied across the different EU Member States.

Main findings:

• the LIS (Large In Scale) waiver is the most used;
• shares are the instrument type for which waivers are requested most frequently;
• the volume under the waivers, both in turnover and number of transactions, is for largely executed in shares;
• ETFs are the instruments with the highest percentage of dark trading with respect to the overall volume traded in those instruments;
• compared to 2018, the percentage of segment MICs applying the LIS deferral regime slightly fell; and
• the UK was the country that submitted the highest number of waiver notifications in 2019.

This is the second report published by ESMA since the application of MiFIR in 2018.

While the first report was published in October 2019 and comprised both equity and non-equity, due to the Covid-19 outbreak and Brexit developments, ESMA has delayed the publication of 2019’s report and divided it into two, with a second report on the application of waivers and deferrals for non-equity instruments to be published in February 2021.

ESMA, under MiFIR, is required to monitor the application of pre-trade transparency waivers and deferred trade-publication. As part of this mandate it submits an annual report to the European Commission on how equity and non-equity waivers and deferrals regimes are applied in practice.

Next steps

ESMA will publish the next annual reports in the second half of 2021 covering the analysis of the application of the waivers and deferral regimes in 2020.

In her introductory remarks, Sandra Gallina, Director-General for Health and Food Safety in the European Commission, explained what the Commission is doing to obtain enough vaccines to reach its objective of having 70% of the EU’s adult population inoculated by the summer. Contracts had to be negotiated rapidly, she said, with liability and indemnification being of paramount importance. The EU has “gone beyond the 12-million-vaccinations mark”, she underlined, saying that “there is no need to envy the US or Israel”.

The Chair of the Committee on Budgets Johan Van Overtveldt (ECR, BE) emphasised that MEPs “did their duty”, by adopting the Emergency Support Instrument in April and managing to triple the EU4Health and boost the Horizon Europe research programmes in the negotiations on the EU long-term budget for 2021-2027.

In the debate, MEPs asked for the contracts with Astra Zeneca and others to be more transparent, especially on how funds from the EU budget are used and distributed, and how much money is coming from member states. The deals with the pharmaceutical companies are of “overriding public interest” and should therefore be disclosed, they said.

Some members demanded that 1.5 billion Euros of unused funds from the research programme and the EU budget margins be used to improve the vaccination rollout in the EU.

Gallina maintained that this money should be spent on tackling variants of COVID-19, and that the problem is linked to production rather than the number of doses ordered. She said she was relying on a breakthrough in the second quarter of 2021 and on companies whose vaccines are not yet registered, as well as on a second contract with BioNTech, to reach the Commission’s vaccination objective.

The Council today adopted a recommendation amending the recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restrictions of free movement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the updated recommendation, a new colour (dark red) is added to the existing categories of green, orange, red and grey in the weekly map published by the ECDC. This colour will apply to areas where the virus is circulating at very high levels, including because of more infectious variants of concern. These are defined as areas where the 14-day cumulative COVID-19 case notification rate is 500 per 100 000 people or more.

Member states should discourage all non-essential travel to red and dark red areas, while at the same time seeking to avoid disruptions to essential travel.

Member states should require persons travelling from an area classified as dark red to:

– undergo a test for COVID-19 infection prior to arrival

– undergo quarantine/self-isolation

Similar measures could apply to areas with a high prevalence of variants of concern.

Given the increase in COVID-19 testing capacity, the recommendation is also amended to give member states the option to require travellers coming from orange, red and grey areas to do a test before departure.

Transport workers and transport service providers should in principle not be required to undergo a test. Where a member states requires them to undergo a test, rapid antigen tests should be used.

People who live in border regions and cross the border daily or frequently, for instance for work, study or family reasons, should not be required to undergo testing or quarantine/self isolation. If a testing requirement is introduced, the frequency of tests on such persons should be proportionate.

These updated measures are a coordinated response to the rise of infections and the risks posed by the more transmissible new variants of the virus within and outside the EU. They follow the recommendation by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to avoid non-essential travel, in order to slow down the importation and spread of the new variants of concern.

By acting in a coordinated manner, member states aim to prevent the reintroduction of internal border controls and to ensure the free movement of goods and services is not disrupted.

Background

The decision on whether to introduce restrictions to free movement to protect public health remains the responsibility of member states; however, coordination on this topic is essential. On 13 October 2020, the Council adopted a recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restrictions of free movement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This recommendation establishes common criteria and a common framework for possible measures for travellers.

The Council recommendation is not a legally binding instrument. The authorities of the member states remain responsible for implementing the content of the recommendation.

Europol supported the Bulgarian authorities to dismantle euro and ID counterfeiters active in the region