On February 23, six delegated regulations containing regulatory technical standards relating to EMIR (Regulation 648/2012) were published in the Official Journal of the European Union.  The regulatory technical standards provide detailed information of requirements relating to OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories in the following areas:

• clearing obligation;
• reporting obligation;
• risk mitigation requirements; and
• registration requirements for central counterparties and trade repositories.

The regulatory technical standards will enter into force on March 15, 2013, (being 20 days from their publication in the Official Journal) and trigger the effective date of several key EMIR obligations, such as the requirement for financial and non-financial entities to confirm their non-centrally-cleared OTC derivative transactions on a timely basis.

ESMA has not yet released draft technical standards relating to the margin and capital requirements for non-centrally cleared trades.