ESMA pushes for ‘report once’ across EU funds and transactions reporting
ESMA published two complementary reports on 4 May, setting out a detailed vision for a significantly simplified European regulatory reporting landscape: one addressing investment funds, the other transaction reporting across financial markets.
The funds report, submitted to the European Commission under a legal mandate from the revised Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and UCITS Directive, proposes moving away from what ESMA describes as a fragmented and often duplicative patchwork of national and EU-level reporting regimes.
The central change proposed is a single, modular reporting template built around a common regulatory data dictionary, with data collected at national level but flowing into a centralised EU data hub for validation, sharing and analytics. The principle is explicit: “report once, use many times.” Next steps include the development of Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) and Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) to make this operational, with a phased implementation roadmap to follow.
The transaction reporting interim report, which draws on feedback from over 100 respondents, takes a similar direction for the broader financial markets reporting landscape, covering frameworks including EMIR, MiFIR and SFTR. Respondents consistently flagged overlapping and inconsistent requirements, frequent and unsynchronised regulatory changes, fragmented reporting channels and dual reporting obligations as the major drivers of cost and complexity.
Two simplification scenarios emerged with meaningful support: a delineation of reporting by instrument type, and a “report once” model that would consolidate reporting across the main transaction reporting regimes. ESMA will hold an open hearing on 28 May before publishing final recommendations, including a full independent cost-benefit analysis, by July 2026.
These two initiatives are worth applauding. They are a valiant attempt to simplify EU financial data collection without losing data granularity and quality. Digital reporting infrastructure is built to enable exactly this kind of streamlined regulatory action, as standardised data is designed to be interoperable and portable, allowing for efficient sharing across authorities.
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