On October 17, 2017, the European Central Bank (“ECB“) published an opinion on the proposed Regulation amending EMIR (Regulation 648/2012) in relation to the clearing obligation, its suspension, the reporting requirements, the risk-mitigation techniques and the registration and supervision of trade repositories.

The European Commission adopted the legislative proposal, which is aimed at introducing a number of changes to EMIR in order to simplify the applicable rules and eliminate disproportionate burdens.

In its opinion, the European Commission generally supports the Commission’s initiative and makes specific observations on the following topics:

Exemption of central bank transactions.

• Amendments to ensure the quality of data.
• Reporting obligation.
• CCPs’ transparency.
• Credit institutions’ compliance with risk-management procedures, intragroup exemptions and capital requirements.
• Classification of securitization special purpose entities as financial counterparties.
• Changes to methodology for calculating counterparties’ positions in OTC derivative contracts.
• The ECB’s advisory role regarding draft-delegated and implementing acts.

The opinion is available here.