Data collection begins for ESAP hub
Five years on from project launch, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has officially kicked off the first phase of data collection for the European Single Access Point (ESAP). Since last week the collection authorities (Officially Appointed Mechanisms and National Competent Authorities) have begun to feed entity information and metadata into ESAP, standardising and validating submissions on their way into the repository.
Regular readers will know we’ve been following ESAP’s progress since it was first announced back in 2021. Billed as the EU’s answer to EDGAR in the US or EDINET in Japan, ESAP will provide free, easy and centralised access to financial and sustainability information on European entities and their products.
Europe has long suffered from data silos, with disclosures scattered across a complex web of national registers. This has presented a cross-border barrier to discoverability, analysis and investment, which ESAP is designed to dismantle.
Crucially, ESAP is built around digital usability. Information flows in machine-readable formats such as iXBRL and xBRL-CSV, and is completed with useful metadata such as the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI). All data should be freely accessible via an API. Preparers already filing in the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) will see their data in the platform from mid 2027. We expect CSRD sustainability disclosures under the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) will follow.
Over the next 12 months ESAP will build up its collection of EU-wide information, with the first phase covering disclosures under the Transparency Directive, the Prospectus Regulation and the Short-selling Regulation. The general public can expect to access the hub from July 2027.
Read more here.
