European Union (EU) on 24 December of last year. They are expected to be covered by equivalence decisions negotiated in the coming months. In the meantime, besides the temporary equivalences granted to UK central counterparties (CCPs) and central securities depositories (CSDs), AMAFI worked on other two other urgent issues in late 2020:

Derivatives Trading Obligation (DTO)

Currently, whether their clients are European or not, the UK branches of European firms are subject to both the EU DTO and the UK DTO. Given that this creates a significant loss of competitiveness, AMAFI teamed up with the French Banking Federation as well as sister associations in Germany (BDB), Italy (ASSOSIM) and Ireland (BPFI) to call on (lien) the European Commission to grant a temporary suspension of Europe's DTO. Although a decision has not been taken yet, with talks still ongoing, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a statement on 31 December (lien) modifying the UK DTO until 31 March 2021: as a result, firms subject to the DTO will be allowed, when trading on behalf of EU clients, to execute their trades on European venues under certain conditions.

UK pension funds

AMAFI also lobbied for UK pension funds to continue to be covered by the temporary exemption under EMIR. Since the exemption is only for European funds under the policy drawn up by ESMA in 2014, and given the potentially severe impact on competitiveness, AMAFI urged France's securities regulator (AMF) to clarify its proposed interpretation of the policy, which predates the Brexit referendum. The AMF Chairman responded by confirming that the policy should not be applied and told affected French firms to contact the AMF (lien).