ESMA have published an updated version to their Questions and Answers document on EMIR, which can be found here.

Among the interesting items for the energy and commodities trading industry:

• It is reiterated that LEIs (or BICs) should be used (TR 10b)
• It is restated that there is no officially endorsed way to generate UPIs or UTIs, but that the “E” method should be used for UTIs, and that for OTC trades a bilaterally agreed method should be used to chose who generates the UTI (TR 10e, TR 18, TR 19)
• The UTI should be generated at the earliest possible opportunity, i.e. the venue if one exists, the CCP, or the confirmation system (in that order). If there is none, then the FC, NFC+ or seller, in that order (TR 19)
• The Level 1 validations are re outlined in TR 20
• Intra-day trades (i.e.those cancelled within the day) should be reported, but a “new” followed by a “cancel” (TR 38).

There are also some other new answers, for example one on what happens when a venue becomes an EU registered financial entity, and also about trades in the FX asset class.

The majority of these items are already being worked as the part of exercise of meeting the 1st December deadline for the Level 1 validations. However it remains to be seen if they will all be adopted in reality, especially when it comes to generating UTIs.