FIA EPTA members welcome the opportunity to respond to this Consultation Paper on Guidelines on the MiFID II/ MiFIR obligations on market data. FIA EPTA has consistently supported ESMA’s work on market data issues and we very much welcomed ESMA’s review report from December 2019 and its draft Guidelines which build on this report. As we have shown in our response to ESMA’s previous consultation in 2019, user data fees are high and have increased over the past years. As reiterated by ESMA, we also agree that new fees have been added and that market data policies and agreements are increasingly complex. In addition, existing rules and disclosures in relation to making certain market data available free of charge and the Reasonable Commercial Basis (RCB) provisions are not being fully complied with. We greatly welcome ESMA’s continued commitment to addressing the issues identified as part of ESMA’s 2019 review report and support ESMA’s draft Guidelines. However, we believe several of the Guidelines could be further improved, extended, or clarified in order to more effectively achieve ESMA’s policy objectives for increased transparency around market data cost.
