ACER Releases First Reports On The Detection, Reporting And Response To Suspicious Energy Market Behaviours Under REMIT

The EU-wide framework that protects consumers and businesses from energy market manipulation and insider trading is commonly known as REMIT. This highly sophisticated framework involves many parties collecting and monitoring data, all working together to ensure the integrity of Europe’s wholesale energy markets. Ultimately, national regulators are enforcing REMIT.

For the first time, ACER publishes two reports on energy market surveillance, concerning:

Persons professionally arranging transactions (PPATs): Analysing their preparedness to detect and report suspicious energy market activities.
National energy regulatory authorities (NRAs): Focusing on their analysis of suspicious transaction and order reports (STORs) submitted by PPATs, their enforcement actions and penalties.

Both reports are mandated by the revised REMIT Regulation (2024) which introduces new obligations for these trading intermediaries (called PPATs under the REMIT framework) and for ACER to report on the follow-ups by the national energy regulators.

What are ACER’s key findings and recommendations?

For persons professionally arranging transactions, ACER found areas for improvement in their surveillance practices, and suggests to:

properly separate REMIT surveillance functions and require declaration of potential conflict of interest by employees;
define and formalise the 'detect - analyse - notify - deter' REMIT procedures;
adopt an adequate surveillance system;
conduct regular audits.

For the follow-ups by national regulators, ACER recommends improving their actions through:

an active engagement with PPATs;
a reduction of cases at the review stage by the quicker dismissal of de-prioritised STORs;
the allocation of adequate dedicated resources (e.g. case handlers) to manage the growing number of REMIT cases;
a prompt communication with ACER on their cases activities.