ESMA consults on EMIR 3 Article 7d reporting

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a consultation paper on draft regulatory and implementing technical standards under Article 7d of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). The Article 7d reporting regime was introduced under EMIR 3 and imposes an annual reporting obligation on clearing members and clients with exposures to third-country central counterparties which are recognised under Article 25 of EMIR. The reporting requirement covers information on the types of instrument cleared, average values cleared, margins collected, default fund contributions, and the largest payment obligation.

The Article 7d reporting requirement has attracted considerable attention. Market participants questioned the need for a further requirement when existing reporting regimes covered the same or comparable data points. Examples include the reporting requirements set out in Article 9 EMIR, the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation. Furthermore, the drafting of the Level 1 text raised various questions of interpretation as to the scope of the requirement, which required ESMA to seek clarification from the European Commission.

The consultation seeks to address these concerns. Notably, ESMA confirmed it had received input from supervisors across jurisdictions indicating that existing Article 9 reporting already provides sufficient information to meet supervisory objectives. More broadly, as an overarching guiding principle, ESMA has sought to ensure that firms should not be required to report information already available to ESMA or competent authorities under existing regimes, with new reporting requirements limited to areas where gaps have been identified.

Key proposals relate to:

• The scope of entities subject to reporting, with confirmation that clients of undertakings with a contractual relationship with a clearing member enabling them to clear transactions through a central counterparty (known as indirect clients) are outside scope of the Article 7d reporting obligations.
• The scope of products included in the reporting obligation, which includes security financing transactions, non-derivative crypto assets and spot contracts.
• High-level classification of instruments based on categories for which tier 1 central counterparties have been recognised.
• The calculation of average values cleared.
• For margin reporting, ESMA proposes to focus on initial margin rather than variation margin but seeks input on whether the inclusion of variation margin would provide meaningful additional insight.
• On the level of consolidated reporting for groups subject to consolidated supervision, ESMA is proposing to require consolidated reporting with a breakdown between EU and non-EU entities, so that data is aggregated at group level but split into two categories reflecting the location of group entities.
• Reporting in CSV format, as ESMA considers XML disproportionately complex.

The first reporting deadline will be the last business day of January which falls at least six months after the entry into force of the relevant regulation. ESMA had previously made a public statement in December 2025 that the first reporting under Article 7d for 2025 data would be expected to be submitted with the 2026 reporting cycle following the implementation of Level 2 measures. The draft regulatory technical standards align with this; the first submission should include separate reports covering each calendar year from 2025 onwards. ESMA provides two examples to illustrate how this would work in practice:

• If the regulation comes into force in May 2027, the first reports would need to be made by the last business day of January 2028 and would need to cover data for 2025, 2026 and 2027.
• If the regulation comes into force in December 2027, the first reports would need to be made by the last business day of January 2029 and would need to cover data for 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028.

The deadline for responses is 12 October, with the final report expected in Q4.

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