The letter addresses provisions related to enforcement of financial information. ESMA recommends that the EC considers modifying the TD to meet four aims:
- Enhance cooperation between authorities across the EU by: Eliminating confidentiality impediments that prevent an efficient and effective exchange of information between TD competent authorities (CAs) and MAR/Prospectus CAs, audit oversight bodies, prudential supervisors, and Anti Money Laundering (AML) supervisory authorities; and Developing RTS on cooperation and information exchange between accounting enforcers and audit oversight bodies, prudential supervisors as well as, where relevant, with AML supervisors.
- Enhance coordination and governance on a national level by: Requiring that national transposition measures clarify the responsibilities, reporting obligations and roles when delegation or designation models concerning enforcement of financial information are implemented; and Including regular review clauses to ensure that delegation and designation models are fit for purpose.
- Strengthen independence of the NCAs by: Not allowing the outsourcing of the task of regular examinations of financial information to audit firms; and Modifying the TD to ensure that the central competent authority, designated authorities and/or delegated entities and their staff are independent from market participants and they perform their duties and act independently from Governments.
- Strengthen harmonised supervision of information across the EU by: Modifying the TD, to ensure that the powers of accounting enforcers are harmonised across the EU. Notably, to ensure that all accounting enforcers, including the delegated entities and designated authorities, have the binding powers to request information and to require corrective information; Supplementing the powers of NCAs to, amongst others, require an independent second audit or forensic examination and carry out joint on-site inspections or investigations; Reinforcing ESMA’s role in financial reporting by including the IAS Regulation into Article 1 (2) of the ESMA Regulation; and Strengthening consistent application and enforcement of disclosures related to Alternative Performance Measures.
The ML/TF risks identified by the EBA include those that are applicable to the entire financial system, for instance the use of innovative financial services, while others affect specific sectors, such as de-risking. The list also includes ML/TF risks that emerge from wider developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic that has an impact on both firms’ AML/CFT compliance and competent authorities’ supervision.
As a complement to this Opinion, the EBA has developed an interactive tool, which gives European citizens, competent authorities and credit and financial institutions access in a user friendly manner to all ML/TF risks covered in the Opinion.
RFR information has been calculated applying the content of the Technical Documentation published on 20 August 2020 and based on RFR coding released on 8 October 2019.
This Regulation establishes the reporting requirements for the following reporting agents which are resident in the territory of the euro area Member States with regard to statistical information on balance sheet items:
- monetary financial institutions (MFIs) other than credit institutions;
- credit institutions which are either: (i) authorised in accordance with Article 8 of Directive 2013/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (10); or (ii) exempt from such authorisation pursuant to Article 2(5) of Directive 2013/36/EU;
- branches of credit institutions, including branches established in a euro area Member State of credit institutions with neither their registered office nor their head office located in a euro area Member State; but excluding branches established outside of a euro area Member State of credit institutions which are established in a euro area Member State.
The recommendations of the Tcfd are referred to in the Guidelines on non-financial reporting of the European Commission, on the basis of which Consob supervises non-financial declarations pursuant to Article no. 6 of the Consob Regulation implementing the Legislative Decree no. 254 of 2016. The support for the recommendations of the Tcfd is part of the framework of the initiatives taken by Consob to raise the awareness of issuers for making reports on sustainability reliable and comparable.
