See here for an article on the Reuters website which reports on a speech given by Lord Hill suggesting that consideration may be given to moving EMIR reporting to one sided reporting, as part of a move to decrease the regulatory burden on the industry. EMIR currently requires both sides of a trade to report it to an authorised Trade Repository, with the same Unique Trade Identifier (UTI). This is in contrast to rules such as Dodd Frank in the US and Finfrag in Switzerland, where only one side of the trade must report it. ISDA have also previously argued in favour of such a move.

Steven Maijoor, chair of ESMA, is reported by the article to have responded that ESMA is also in favour of a reducing the reporting burden on some market participants, but that a complete move away from double sided reporting may not  be optimal. This is consistent with ESMA’s response to the EMIR review, published last year, which proposes to reduce the burden by requiring a Financial Counterparty to report both sides of a trade, where the non financial counterparty is “small” . This approach would have the benefit of keeping the theoretical benefit of double sided reporting, namely better data quality, and maintaining the existing infrastructure.