On September 4, 2015, the European Central Bank (ECB) published an executive summary of its response to the consultation carried out by the European Commission to assist the Commission in its review of EMIR implementation.

The ECB’s main recommendations include:

1. further study of the use of OTC derivatives by non-financial counterparties, with a view to assessing whether the current framework causes undue restrictions on such parties accessing the OTC derivatives market to support their regular business;
2. further enhancing margin requirements in order to mitigate procyclicality;
3. additional requirements to guarantee the resilience of portfolio margining models in times of stress;
4. clarifying the definitions and scope of EMIR to ensure that central bank transactions are fully exempt from the reporting obligations, enabling central banks to continue to perform their statutory tasks effectively;
5. establishing a process whereby the clearing obligation may be swiftly removed or suspended when the market situation so requires (for example when certain instruments become illiquid, or a central clearing partly is under recovery or resolution procedures);
6. providing additional safeguards to mitigate the risks of settlement in commercial bank money, and strengthening the requirements relating to the measurement, monitoring and management of exposures to entities other than clearing members; and
7. increasing access to EMIR trade data by the single supervisory mechanism and banking supervisors.