The European Supervisory Authorities published their joint annual report for 2020 providing a detailed account of all joint work completed over the past year.

ESMA publishes the final report on the functioning of the SME growth markets regime under MiFID/MiFIR. The report contains recommendations and possible amendments to the MiFID II framework to the SME regime that are necessary to improve the attractiveness of the regime.

The EBA has opened a public consultation on its draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the list of countries with an advanced economy for calculating equity risk under the alternative standardised approach (FRTB-SA).

The consultation will end on 2 July 2021.

EIOPA has published its IDD Single Rulebook. The Single Rulebook is an online tool that further promotes the consistent implementation of the regulatory framework for insurance supervision. The main advantage of the Single Rulebook is that it allows navigation through different legal acts such as the Directive, Delegated and implementing regulations, as well as EIOPA guidelines and IDD Q&As sent through EIOPA’s dedicated Q&A process. The purpose of this tool is to improve understanding of the applicable rules and, at the same time, promote the European internal market.

Published in the Official Journal of the European Union on April 7, 2021, the Communication of the European Commission 2021/C 118/01 on Guidelines for a common interpretation of the term “environmental damage” referred to in Article 2 of Directive 2004/35/EC on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental damage.

These Guidelines for a common interpretation of environmental damage respond to a need identified in an evaluation of the Directive carried out by the Commission in 2016. The evaluation found that the implementation of the Directive was hampered by a considerable lack of uniformity in the application of certain key concepts, in particular related to the notion of environmental damage. In this context, the Guidelines consider all aspects of the definition of “environmental damage”. The term has multiple meanings: it encompasses or refers to many other terms and concepts, which have been taken into account in the Guidelines as they are necessary for the interpretation of the term. In terms of structure, the Guidelines first outline the legal and broader regulatory context in which the definition applies. They then analyze the definition of “damage” and the full wording of the definition “environmental damage,” and then examine in detail the three distinct categories of environmental damage included in the definition, namely “damage to protected species and natural habitats,” “damage to water,” and “damage to land.”