On the 4th of January of 2022, ESMA has published a call for evidence on distributed ledger technology (DLT), seeking the input from stakeholders on the need for amending several regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the use of DLT tools for trading and settlement of “tokenised” securities under the DLT Pilot Regime and on data reporting and pre- and post-trade transparency requirements under the MiFIR in connection with the use of this technology.
This call for evidence aims at enabling relevant feedback from all stakeholders in the context of the DLT Pilot. While the text of the DLT Pilot is yet under construction, a political agreement between the European Parliament and the Council was reached on 24 November 2021 with a view to implement the DLT Pilot Regime at the beginning of 2023 (leaving little time to receive these inputs and process them in due time for the RTS-adjustment).
Hence, the RTS under consultation are as follows:
- RTS 1 (equity transparency);
- RTS 2 (non-equity transparency);
- RTS 3 (double volume cap and provision of data);
- RTS 22 (transaction reporting);
- RTS 23 (reference data);
- RTS 24 (order record keeping); and
- RTS 25 (clock synchronisation).
This call for evidence aims at collecting useful inputs from the market that will significantly contribute to create and enhance an EU framework that enables markets in crypto assets and the wider use of DLT in financial services, while guaranteeing adequate data reporting and transparency requirements and the possibility for the market regulators to be granted direct access to the DLT. The consultation documentation can be obtained here.
Stakeholders are invited to provide comments by 4 March 2022. Following that, ESMA will reflect whether amendments to the RTS are necessary or not. Should ESMA conclude that such amendments are necessary, ESMA will further launch a public consultation of the draft RTS, before submitting the final draft RTS to the European Commission for adoption.