Put the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) under a “targeted review”, to “strengthen the CSD passport and facilitate the servicing of domestic issuance in non-national currencies”. This message is sent to the European Commisison from the EU’s high-level forum on the capital markets union, CMU.
While the industry is busy discussing the timeline for the final steps of CSDR implementation – notably the disputed settlement discipline regime now scheduled for 1 Februrary 2021 – the CMU high-level forum acknowledges that it would be premature to launch a full review of the framework. Even so, it sees several issues it thinks should be targeted.
The recommendations relating to capital markets infrastructure, in fact proposed by a special subgroup on the topic, can be found on pages 77–81 in the final report, published Wednesday, of the high level forum on the capital markets union.
Hurdles still there
The group highlights the mismatch between CSDR’s pan-European ambition of a “common CSD market” and the fact that national competent authorities apply rules differently, creating “procedural and regulatory hurdles, fragmenting the post-trade landscape along national lines”.
“The European Commission is invited to conduct a targeted review of Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) to strengthen the CSD passport and facilitate the servicing of domestic issuance in non-national currencies. This should be accompanied by measures to strengthen the supervisory convergence among National Competent Authorities (NCAs). These measures, taken jointly, should enhance the cross-border provision of settlement services in the EU,” writes the group.
Crypto and cloud are covered
The infrastructure subgroup also pushes a harmonised definition of a “shareholder”, among a list of recommendations relating to shareholder rights. Interesting points in the report, but outside the infrastructure scope, include a recommendation on crypto/digital assets and tokenisation, as well as a recommendation on cloud computing. As we noted recently, the cloud computing is currently topic for a public consultation by ESMA.
(Photo: Bruno Kelzer / Unsplash)