Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the CouncilShow full title

Article 48 Systems resilience, circuit breakers and electronic trading

1. Member States shall require a regulated market to have in place effective systems, procedures and arrangements to ensure its trading systems are resilient, have sufficient capacity to deal with peak order and message volumes, are able to ensure orderly trading under conditions of severe market stress, are fully tested to ensure such conditions are met and are subject to effective business continuity arrangements to ensure continuity of its services if there is any failure of its trading systems.

2. Member States shall require a regulated market to have in place:

(a) written agreements with all investment firms pursuing a market making strategy on the regulated market;

(b) schemes to ensure that a sufficient number of investment firms participate in such agreements which require them to post firm quotes at competitive prices with the result of providing liquidity to the market on a regular and predictable basis, where such a requirement is appropriate to the nature and scale of the trading on that regulated market.

3. The written agreement referred to in paragraph 2 shall at least specify:

(a) the obligations of the investment firm in relation to the provision of liquidity and where applicable any other obligation arising from participation in the scheme referred to in paragraph 2(b);

(b) any incentives in terms of rebates or otherwise offered by the regulated market to an investment firm so as to provide liquidity to the market on a regular and predictable basis and, where applicable, any other rights accruing to the investment firm as a result of participation in the scheme referred to in paragraph 2(b).

The regulated market shall monitor and enforce compliance by investment firms with the requirements of such binding written agreements. The regulated market shall inform the competent authority about the content of the binding written agreement and shall, upon request, provide all further information to the competent authority necessary to enable the competent authority to satisfy itself of compliance by the regulated market with this paragraph.

4. Member States shall require a regulated market to have in place effective systems, procedures and arrangements to reject orders that exceed pre-determined volume and price thresholds or are clearly erroneous.

5. Member States shall require a regulated market to be able to temporarily halt or constrain trading if there is a significant price movement in a financial instrument on that market or a related market during a short period and, in exceptional cases, to be able to cancel, vary or correct any transaction. Member States shall require a regulated market to ensure that the parameters for halting trading are appropriately calibrated in a way which takes into account the liquidity of different asset classes and sub-classes, the nature of the market model and types of users and is sufficient to avoid significant disruptions to the orderliness of trading.

Member States shall ensure that a regulated market reports the parameters for halting trading and any material changes to those parameters to the competent authority in a consistent and comparable manner, and that the competent authority shall in turn report them to ESMA. Member States shall require that where a regulated market which is material in terms of liquidity in that financial instrument halts trading, in any Member State, that trading venue has the necessary systems and procedures in place to ensure that it will notify competent authorities in order for them to coordinate a market-wide response and determine whether it is appropriate to halt trading on other venues on which the financial instrument is traded until trading resumes on the original market.

6. Member States shall require a regulated market to have in place effective systems, procedures and arrangements, including requiring members or participants to carry out appropriate testing of algorithms and providing environments to facilitate such testing, to ensure that algorithmic trading systems cannot create or contribute to disorderly trading conditions on the market and to manage any disorderly trading conditions which do arise from such algorithmic trading systems, including systems to limit the ratio of unexecuted orders to transactions that may be entered into the system by a member or participant, to be able to slow down the flow of orders if there is a risk of its system capacity being reached and to limit and enforce the minimum tick size that may be executed on the market.

7. Member States shall require a regulated market that permits direct electronic access to have in place effective systems procedures and arrangements to ensure that members or participants are only permitted to provide such services if they are investment firms authorised under this Directive or credit institutions authorised under Directive 2013/36/EU, that appropriate criteria are set and applied regarding the suitability of persons to whom such access may be provided and that the member or participant retains responsibility for orders and trades executed using that service in relation to the requirements of this Directive.

Member States shall also require that the regulated market set appropriate standards regarding risk controls and thresholds on trading through such access and is able to distinguish and if necessary to stop orders or trading by a person using direct electronic access separately from other orders or trading by the member or participant.

The regulated market shall have arrangements in place to suspend or terminate the provision of direct electronic access by a member or participant to a client in the case of non-compliance with this paragraph.

8. Member States shall require a regulated market to ensure that its rules on co-location services are transparent, fair and non-discriminatory.

9. Member States shall require that a regulated market ensure that its fee structures including execution fees, ancillary fees and any rebates are transparent, fair and non-discriminatory and that they do not create incentives to place, modify or cancel orders or to execute transactions in a way which contributes to disorderly trading conditions or market abuse. In particular, Member States shall require a regulated market to impose market making obligations in individual shares or a suitable basket of shares in exchange for any rebates that are granted.

Member States shall allow a regulated market to adjust its fees for cancelled orders according to the length of time for which the order was maintained and to calibrate the fees to each financial instrument to which they apply.

Member States may allow a regulated market to impose a higher fee for placing an order that is subsequently cancelled than an order which is executed and to impose a higher fee on participants placing a high ratio of cancelled orders to executed orders and on those operating a high-frequency algorithmic trading technique in order to reflect the additional burden on system capacity.

10. Member States shall require a regulated market to be able to identify, by means of flagging from members or participants, orders generated by algorithmic trading, the different algorithms used for the creation of orders and the relevant persons initiating those orders. That information shall be available to competent authorities upon request.

11. Member States shall require that upon request by the competent authority of the home Member State of a regulated market, regulated markets make available to the competent authority data relating to the order book or give the competent authority access to the order book so that it is able to monitor trading.

12. ESMA shall develop draft regulatory technical standards further specifying:

(a) the requirements to ensure trading systems of regulated markets are resilient and have adequate capacity;

(b) the ratio referred to in paragraph 6, taking into account factors such as the value of unexecuted orders in relation to the value of executed transactions;

(c) the controls concerning direct electronic access in such a way as to ensure that the controls applied to sponsored access are at least equivalent to those applied to direct market access;

(d) the requirements to ensure that co-location services and fee structures are fair and non-discriminatory and that fee structures do not create incentives for disorderly trading conditions or market abuse;

(e) the determination of where a regulated market is material in terms of liquidity in that financial instrument;

(f) the requirements to ensure that market making schemes are fair and non-discriminatory and to establish minimum market making obligations that regulated markets must provide for when designing a market making scheme and the conditions under which the requirement to have in place a market making scheme is not appropriate, taking into account the nature and scale of the trading on that regulated market, including whether the regulated market allows for or enables algorithmic trading to take place through its systems;

(g) the requirements to ensure appropriate testing of algorithms so as to ensure that algorithmic trading systems including high-frequency algorithmic trading systems cannot create or contribute to disorderly trading conditions on the market.

ESMA shall submit those draft regulatory technical standards to the Commission by 3 July 2015.

Power is delegated to the Commission to adopt the regulatory technical standards referred to in the first subparagraph in accordance with Articles 10 to 14 of Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010.

13. ESMA shall, by 3 January 2016, develop guidelines on the appropriate calibration of trading halts under paragraph 5, taking into account the factors referred to in that paragraph.