The European Register of Market Participants and the List of Standard Contracts are being published on the REMIT Portal today. The publication marks the finalisation of the Agency’s preparatory work on supporting documentation for data collection under REMIT, the EU Regulation on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency. The publication coincides with the Agency’s completion of its IT development of ARIS, ACER’s REMIT Information System, for data collection from Organised Market Places and ENTSO transparency platforms for the first phase of data collection as of 7 October 2015. The fourth edition of the Agency’s REMIT Q&A was also published today which contains questions and answers concerning the European Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1348/2014 (the ‘Implementing Acts’) in addition to the questions and answers concerning REMIT.
The European Register of Market Participants with currently more than 300 market participants registered by National Regulatory Authorities as well as the List of Standard contracts with currently more than 6000 listed contracts are being published today on the Agency’s REMIT portal under the following links:
- European Register of Market Participants
They will now be updated on a regular basis. With this publication, ACER has completed the preparations for the first phase data collection under the REMIT implementing acts, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1348/2014. The Agency will now concentrate on the registration of reporting parties applying to become Registered Reporting Mechanisms (RRMs), which had to be de-prioritised so far given the Agency’s limited human resources. In addition, the Agency will continue refining its IT solution for data collection and supporting documentation and further develop its IT solution for market monitoring and data sharing.
ACER announced also today that it is setting up an informal ad-hoc expert group on REMIT following the expiry of the previous groups. Experts responding to the criteria set in the open letter published on the Agency’s website are invited to apply by 31 March 2015. The goal of this group will be to advise and to contribute to the work of the Agency on issues related to the market participants’ compliance with REMIT, in particular with the disclosure of inside information, market abuse prohibitions, registration and transaction reporting obligations.
Background
REMIT establishes a new, unprecedented, sector-specific market monitoring framework to detect and prevent market abuse in European wholesale energy markets, where energy should be traded according to the highest transparency and integrity standards. The full implementation of REMIT is vital to guarantee well-functioning markets to the benefits of European energy consumers. Even more importantly now that the single market is being completed through rules directly applicable throughout the Union and other developments such as a single day-ahead market for electricity, which operates from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia and a common platform for allocating cross-border gas capacity on a growing number of interconnection points.
Despite the formidable challenge of implementing a legislation, on which there is still little experience worldwide, ACER has been working steadily on the implementation of REMIT since it entered into force in December 2011, with the invaluable collaboration of National Regulatory Authorities and energy stakeholders. By the end of June 2014, the Agency already opened the platform to support the Centralised European Register of Market Participants (CEREMP) to National Regulatory Authorities for the national registration of market participants. This allowed several National Regulatory Authorities using CEREMP to already start the registration of market participants at national level well in time before the expiry of their obligation to establish national registers of market participants no later than three months after the adoption of the REMIT Implementing Acts by 17 March 2015. The development of the IT system for the collection and analysis of trade and fundamental data is also progressing fast and enabled the Agency to start the registration of reporting parties upon entry into force of the Implementing Acts. The Agency is currently handling more than 100 RRM applications, with priority being given to those having to report as of 7 October 2015.
Following the entry into force of the Implementing Acts on 7 January 2015, market participants and third parties reporting on their behalf will have
- until 7 October 2015 to prepare the reporting of reportable wholesale energy contracts admitted to trading at Organised Market Places and of fundamental data from the ENTSOs’ central information transparency platforms, and
- until 7 April 2016 for the reporting of the remaining reportable wholesale energy contracts (OTC standard and non-standard supply contracts; transportation contracts) and of reportable fundamental data from TSOs, LSOs and SSOs.
Market participants have to register with National Regulatory Authorities prior to entering into transactions which are required to be reported under the Implementing Acts, i.e. until 7 October 2015 if they are entering into reportable wholesale energy contracts admitted to trading at Organised Market Places or until 7 April 2016 if they are only entering into other reportable wholesale energy contracts.
The Agency has put in place a new procedure to address the increasing number of stakeholder questions in monthly updates of the Agency's Q&A paper on REMIT, rather than replying to them individually.