Communication regarding Article 26 (obligation to report transactions) of MiFIR

Article 26 of Regulation (EU) No 600/2014 on markets in financial instruments (hereafter, “MiFIR”) contains the obligation for credit institutions and investment firms which execute transactions in financial instruments to report complete and accurate details of such transactions to the competent authority.

Based on the experience gained following the entry into force, on 3 January 2018, of the new reporting format under MiFIR, ESMA has approved a new version of the functional specifications that will be implemented on 23 September 2019. The direct impact of these changes for credit institutions and investment firms is the migration of messages to the new registered versions, resulting in a new version of XML files to be submitted to the CSSF. Reporting entities and NCAs shall start using the final versions of messages as of the go-live date of the so-called ESMA Maintenance Release.

This press release aims at clarifying the transition towards the new XML format as planned by the CSSF.

The CSSF will accept and process TAF reporting files in the old format (used at the time of publication of this press release) until Friday 20 September 2019 13:00 UTC (15:00 local time in Luxembourg). After this cut-off date, the receipt of incoming files will be suspended while the CSSF finishes to process the data received, and generates the respective feedback files in the old format. Any file submitted on 21 and 22 September 2019 will not be processed by the CSSF before Monday, 23 September 2019.

On the 23 September 2019 the CSSF will resume the receipt of transaction data from credit institutions and investment firms, as well as the sending of respective feedback files in the new format (XSD 1.1.0).

Any transaction reports, including backlogs (e.g. resending historical files or transactions) submitted after the above mentioned cut-off date must respect the new format by ESMA. The CSSF will not be able to process the data in the old format after the implementation date. If such files are still received, they will be rejected as incorrectly formatted files.

The CSSF requires credit institutions and investment firms to take all necessary steps to ensure a seamless switch to the new format and thus to comply, without interruption, with their obligation to report transactions as provided for in Article 26 MiFIR. In order to facilitate this transition, the CSSF’s test environment will be switched to the new format as of 9 September 2019 for a test period that will last until 18 September 2019.

Until the go live, the current XML Schema 1.0.3 should continue to be used to report data to the CSSF in the production environment.

In light of the above, the CSSF wishes to remind that the revised TAF Handbook, provides, among other things, details on the connection to our test environment as well as links to the updated documents as published by ESMA.