17.III.4.2.2.1 Assessment of doing nothing, free of charge data, and quantitative price caps

As a first step ESMA discarded some of the regulatory options. ESMA rejected the first option (do nothing), since ESMA did not consider this to be aligned with the mandate to specify a reasonable commercial basis. ESMA also noted that quantitative price caps (also: price controls) (option d), for instance limiting the price of data to EUR X per month per screen, could prevent innovation and experimentation in pricing models. Furthermore, ESMA considered that requiring data to be published for free (option e) would clearly not be on a reasonable ‘commercial’ basis.1 Finally, ESMA found that basing limits on existing prices (option c.i) was not workable in the market. This is because limits on existing prices assumed that existing prices were a reasonable starting point or depended upon identifying a comparator whose prices were accepted as being reasonable.2 In effect, ESMA analysed three approaches: general principles and disclosure obligations (transparent commercial terms) (option b); revenue-based controls (option c.ii); and cost-based controls (option c.iii).