The European Commission have today published this press release together with a legislative proposal for the delay of the application of MiFID II by one year to January 2018. The legislative documents can be found here and here. The news follows a few weeks of discussion about the delay, with some speculation that it would be delayed further.

The documents do not delay the transposition deadline for member states of the legislation, which had been requested to be delayed as well. This will disappoint some as reported on this article on the Bloomberg web site. Since both the delegated acts and approval of Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) have not been finalised, there is still the possibility that a delay in these items will again cause issues, as highlighted on this post on the Fidessa web site.

The energy and commodity trading sector also await the finalisation of RTS 20 and 21, regarding the Ancillary Activity test and position limits. It is hoped that these will be fixed soon.