5.VI.2.2.9 Interim conclusion

From MiFID I to MiFID II a substantial increase in harmonisation is visible for EU equity pre-trade transparency calculations and estimates (top-down approach). The increase in harmonisation is the result of several factors, primarily being: (1) a broader scope of the MiFID II equity pre-trade transparency regime (MiFID I was confined to shares admitted to trading on an RM), (2) more equity pre-trade transparency thresholds (e.g. the SI-definition) and (3) issues under MiFID I (in particular the collection of data). The MiFID II equity pre-trade transparency regime requires high operational standards to ensure high quality data is available for the MiFID II equity pre-trade transparency calculations and estimations. The EU beliefs that otherwise the MiFID II equity pre-trade transparency regime would not work in practice.

The EU intends to find a balance between: (a) high quality data and harmonised calculation/estimation provisions and (b) alleviating the workload of NCAs and the industry. Alleviating the workload for the industry is, for example, apparent in ESMA helping with the SI assessments by performing the calculations of EU trading activity. Another example of alleviating the workload for both NCAs and the industry is the MiFID II requirement of sending data for periodic calculations on a daily basis. The MiFID II daily basis requirement results in slicing the amount of data NCAs need to process in smaller chunks and a daily basis constitutes a simple timeframe for RMs, MTFs, and APAs (and CTPs). The workload of NCAs is reduced even further by the possibility to delegate data collection and/or calculation and estimation tasks to ESMA. In practice many NCAs (not: all) have delegated data collection and/or calculation and estimation tasks to ESMA.

The delegations should be viewed in conjunction with delegation of MiFID IIreference data tasks from NCAs to ESMA (see paragraph 1 above). With MiFID II the EU has entered completely new ground to improve data quality. MiFID II is characterised by greater emphasis on data quality with the strategy being a top-down (i.e. EU) approach. The result is that ESMA has become a central facility in relation to: (i) reference data and trading data, as well as (ii) calculations/estimations of MiFID II equity pre-trade transparency thresholds.