Plenary confirmed new rules for benchmarks
Plenary adopted a benchmark deal agreed with the Council in December 2024 aimed at protecting financial stability, while reducing administrative and regulatory burden.
A benchmark is a statistical measure, calculated from a representative set of data, that is used as a reference price for a financial instrument, financial contract, or to measure a performance. Text adopted on Tuesday is the benchmark regulation review
As prices of financial instruments depend on benchmarks, the new rules should apply to critical benchmarks, significant benchmarks and certain commodity benchmarks, as well as climate-related benchmarks such as EU Climate Transition Benchmarks (EU CTB) and EU Paris-aligned Benchmarks (EU PAB), in order to assure adequate supervision. The spot foreign exchange benchmarks complying with certain criteria have been also kept in the scope. The text confirmed the threshold of a total average value of at least 50 billion euro to define a significant benchmark, while introducing refinements to methodology to calculate the threshold.
Other benchmarks will be subject to a voluntary supervision regime, provided, that they reached the threshold of 20 billion euro. In order to promote the use of common standards for climate-related benchmarks such as EU CTB or EU PAB and to ensure their appropriate supply in the Union, benchmark administrators are encouraged to provide such benchmarks in the EU.
Regarding ESG-related benchmarks, the Commission should specify the information, as well as the standard format to be used for references to ESG factors to enable market participants to make well-informed choices and to ensure the technical feasibility of compliance.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has a supervisory role over administrators endorsing benchmarks provided in a third country.
The Regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union and should apply from 1 January 2026.
