EU Short Selling – Sovereign Debt

The Council of the European Union has, on 1 December 2014, published a provisional version of a press release announcing its decision not to object to the adoption by the Commission of a regulation on the notification of significant net short positions in sovereign debt. Following the press release, the regulation, a delegated regulation supplementing the EU Short Selling Regulation,¹ can be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and enter into force, unless the European Parliament objects.

The new delegated regulation confirms the application of the rules on notifying national regulators of significant net short positions in sovereign debt when different entities in a group have long or short positions in the debt of the same sovereign issuer. Currently, the rules, which are set out in the original delegated regulation supplementing the EU Short Selling Regulation,² explicitly refer to the thresholds for the notification to national regulators