EU legislators must not get stuck in details

The Market Abuse Regulation has an important purpose to ensure market integrity and investor protection by preventing market abuse, insider trading, market manipulation, and unlawful disclosure of inside information. It is clear that securing compliance with parts of the Market Abuse Regulation is particularly, and unnecessarily, difficult and burdensome for issuers.

Therefore, the aims of the Listing Act were welcomed by many, i.e., to enhance legal clarity, address disproportionate requirements for issuers and increase the overall attractiveness of the capital markets within the EU, while ensuring an appropriate level of investor protection and market integrity.

Now that the Listing Act has been adopted and level two legislation is in the process of being developed, we see a risk that some of the changes made under the Listing Act will not provide the simplifications sought but instead risk leading to new and additional burdens for issuers, contrary to the aims of the legislation and to the EU’s current focus on competitiveness and better regulation.

In practice, some of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, proposals now being consulted upon, presumably unintentionally, miss an important opportunity to support issuers and strengthen the competitiveness of the capital markets within the EU.

The Confederation of Danish Industry, the Confederation of Finnish Industries, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, and the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise now jointly urge ESMA and the European Commission to stay attentive to and remain focused on the purpose of the Listing Act amendments when preparing delegated acts under the Market Abuse Regulation.

It is of the essence that the EU legislators do not get stuck in detail and technical complexity but focus on strengthening the competitiveness of European businesses.