ESCB-CESR

Establishment of a working group

In October 2001 the Governing Council of the ECB and the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) agreed to cooperate in the field of securities clearing and settlement. They set up a working group composed of representatives from the ECB, EU national central banks and CESR. The European Commission attends meetings of this group as an observer.

Objective

To adapt the global CPSS-IOSCO recommendations for securities settlement systems and central counterparties with the aim to increase the safety, soundness and efficiency of securities clearing and settlement systems and central counterparties (CCPs) in the European Union.

Finalisation of the ESCB-CESR recommendations

The initial work by the ESCB-CESR was frozen in 2005 owing to open issues regarding scope, content and the legal basis of the ESCB-CESR recommendations. On 3 June 2008, the ECOFIN Council invited the ESCB and the CESR to adapt and finalise the former draft entitled “Standards for securities clearing and settlement in the European Union”, respecting a number of principles, namely:

1. the adopted text should take the form of non-binding recommendations solely addressed to public authorities and not to market participants;
2. its scope should include international central securities depositaries and exclude custodian banks; and
3. on credit and liquidity risk controls, the benchmark accepted by the G10 – namely CPSS-IOSCO Recommendation 9 for securities settlement systems of 2001 — should be adopted.

The ESCB and the CESR resumed its work in June 2008 and revised the recommendations taking into account all recent regulatory and legal developments and other initiatives.

Main publications and state-of-play

On 23 June 2009 the final ESCB-CESR recommendations were published, together with a feedback document to the two public consultations held in this respect. Furthermore, A separate document showing (in “Track Changes”) the differences between the ESCB-CESR and CPSS-IOSCO recommendations (excluding the Annexes) was also published for information.