ESMA chief vows no more MiFID II delays

The chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has pledged there will be no further delay on the implementation of MiFID II.

Speaking during the FIA IDX conference in London, ESMA’s Steven Maijoor eased concerns that the regulation would face further delay.

“Contrary to some recent coverage and commentary, MiFID 2/MiFIR will come into effect on 3 January 2018, there will be no further delay in its implementation. One delay has been enough for all concerned,” said Maijoor.

“The implementation and operation of MiFID 2/MIFIR are testing both regulators and market participants, but I am confident that we, at ESMA, have the capacity to meet these challenges.”

The European Council officially confirmed a one-year delay to the implementation of MiFID II in May 2016.

ESMA informed the European Commission in October 2015 “that a delay to the technical implementation of MiFID II was unavoidable.”

At the time, it was said that implementing the new regulation by the original January 2017 deadline would have led to “legal uncertainty and potential market disruption.” As a result, the implementation date was delayed until January 2018, though there have been concerns the timescale remains too tight for market participants to comply with the substantial regulation.

Maijoor also confirmed that ESMA remains on track with the necessary IT projects.

“We have made significant progress over the last months with the implementation of our ESMA IT projects that will be crucial for the successful implementation of MiFID II.”

“ESMA is on track with all MIFID 2/MIFIR IT projects, in particular the Financial Instruments Reference Data System (comprising the collection of reference and trading data and the transparency calculations), and the double volume cap mechanism,” said Maijoor.