EU Regulatory Reform: The Past Six Months

It seems a long time since the global agreement on the need for radical reform of financial services regulation in the wake of the financial crisis. We always knew measures would take months and years in the negotiation and implementation stages. Suddenly, since the beginning of 2014, several critical pieces of EU legislation have reached milestones. Below, we summarise the major developments from the past six months.

MiFID 2

The revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID 2) and Regulation (MiFIR), known collectively as the MiFID 2 package, was adopted and published in the EU's Official Journal on 12 June. This means most of its provisions will take effect in Member States from 3 January 2017. The package brings fundamental change to several areas of investment services and trading, including: