The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, today launched a consultation on draft technical standards specifying the criteria for how investment firms establish and assess the effectiveness of their order execution policies.

The objective of the proposed technical standards is to foster investor protection by enhancing investment firms’ order execution. 

ESMA is seeking stakeholder input on:  

• the establishment of an investment firm’s order execution policy. This includes the classification of financial instruments in which firms execute client orders and the initial selection of venues for the order execution policy;
• the investment firm’s procedures to monitor and regularly assess the effectiveness of its order execution arrangements and order execution policy;
• the investment firm’s execution of client orders through own account dealing; and on
• how an investment firm should deal with client instructions.

Further information on the MiFID II / MiFIR review and the upcoming consultations can be found on the dedicated webpage.

Next steps

ESMA will consider all comments received by 16 October 2024. 

Based on the input received, ESMA will prepare the final report for subsequent submission of the final draft technical standards to the European Commission.

Further information:

Sarah Edwards

Senior Communications Officer
press@esma.europa.eu