The European Commission has adopted technical standards to enable the creation of consolidated tapes, as required by the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR). Consolidated tapes are centralised data feeds that bring together the prices and volumes of financial instruments, such as shares, bonds and derivatives, from hundreds of execution venues, such as exchanges, across all Member States into a single stream of information. Consolidated tapes will empower both professional and retail investors to make more informed decisions. They will also improve competition by driving trading to venues with better prices and liquidity.
Addressing the fragmented EU trading landscape drives forward the Savings and Investment Union, enhancing the competitiveness and integration of EU financial markets.
The technical standards adopted today seek to ensure that the consolidated tapes receive high quality data in a timely manner. They also specify the criteria for authorising consolidated tape providers and define the methodology for the equity tape provider to share the revenue earned from selling consolidated data with the trading venues that supplied it. The standards also specify the conditions for making market data available to the public in an accessible, fair and non-discriminatory manner, while ensuring fair and reasonable fees.
Financial Services and the Savings and Investments Union Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque (pictured) said: “The consolidated tapes are a significant contribution to the Savings and Investments Union. Today, accessing trading data in the EU is still too costly and dispersed. By offering a unified, reliable view of market activity across the Union, consolidated tapes will make our capital markets more transparent, competitive, and accessible — both for investors within the EU and globally. Today’s rules mark a decisive step towards building a truly single European capital market.”
The requirements are adopted in the form of an implementing act and three delegated acts. The latter will now be transmitted to the European Parliament and the Council for their scrutiny. In the next few days, the Commission plans to adopt another Delegated Act on transparency rules to support the full implementation of the consolidated tapes.
