TITLE I

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Exemptions
Article 2
1
This Directive shall not apply to:
a
insurance undertakings or undertakings carrying out the reinsurance and retrocession activities referred to in Directive 2009/138/EC when carrying out the activities referred to in that Directive;
b
persons providing investment services exclusively for their parent undertakings, for their subsidiaries or for other subsidiaries of their parent undertakings;
c
persons providing an investment service where that service is provided in an incidental manner in the course of a professional activity and that activity is regulated by legal or regulatory provisions or a code of ethics governing the profession which do not exclude the provision of that service;
d
persons dealing on own account in financial instruments other than commodity derivatives or emission allowances or derivatives thereof and not providing any other investment services or performing any other investment activities in financial instruments other than commodity derivatives or emission allowances or derivatives thereof unless such persons:
1. are market makers;
2. are members of or participants in a regulated market or an MTF, on the one hand, or have direct electronic access to a trading venue, on the other hand, except for non-financial entities who execute transactions on a trading venue which are objectively measurable as reducing risks directly relating to the commercial activity or treasury financing activity of those non-financial entities or their groups;
3. apply a high-frequency algorithmic trading technique; or
4. deal on own account when executing client orders;
Persons exempt under points (a), (i) or (j) are not required to meet the conditions laid down in this point in order to be exempt.
e
operators with compliance obligations under Directive 2003/87/EC who, when dealing in emission allowances, do not execute client orders and who do not provide any investment services or perform any investment activities other than dealing on own account, provided that those persons do not apply a high-frequency algorithmic trading technique;
f
persons providing investment services consisting exclusively in the administration of employee-participation schemes;
g
persons providing investment services which only involve both the administration of employee-participation schemes and the provision of investment services exclusively for their parent undertakings, for their subsidiaries or for other subsidiaries of their parent undertakings;
h
the members of the ESCB and other national bodies performing similar functions in the Union, other public bodies charged with or intervening in the management of the public debt in the Union and international financial institutions established by two or more Member States which have the purpose of mobilising funding and providing financial assistance to the benefit of their members that are experiencing or threatened by severe financing problems;
i
collective investment undertakings and pension funds whether coordinated at Union level or not and the depositaries and managers of such undertakings;
j
persons:
1. dealing on own account, including market makers, in commodity derivatives or emission allowances or derivatives thereof, excluding persons who deal on own account when executing client orders; or
2. providing investment services, other than dealing on own account, in commodity derivatives or emission allowances or derivatives thereof to the customers or suppliers of their main business;
provided that:
- for each of those cases individually and on an aggregate basis this is an ancillary activity to their main business, when considered on a group basis, and that main business is not the provision of investment services within the meaning of this Directive or banking activities under Directive 2013/36/EU, or acting as a market-maker in relation to commodity derivatives,
- those persons do not apply a high-frequency algorithmic trading technique; and
- those persons notify annually the relevant competent authority that they make use of this exemption and upon request report to the competent authority the basis on which they consider that their activity under points (i) and (ii) is ancillary to their main business;
k
persons providing investment advice in the course of providing another professional activity not covered by this Directive provided that the provision of such advice is not specifically remunerated;
l
associations set up by Danish and Finnish pension funds with the sole aim of managing the assets of pension funds that are members of those associations;
m
‘agenti di cambio’ whose activities and functions are governed by Article 201 of Italian Legislative Decree No 58 of 24 February 1998;
n
transmission system operators as defined in Article 2(4) of Directive 2009/72/EC or Article 2(4) of Directive 2009/73/EC when carrying out their tasks under those Directives, under Regulation (EC) No 714/2009, under Regulation (EC) No 715/2009 or under network codes or guidelines adopted pursuant to those Regulations, any persons acting as service providers on their behalf to carry out their task under those legislative acts or under network codes or guidelines adopted pursuant to those Regulations, and any operator or administrator of an energy balancing mechanism, pipeline network or system to keep in balance the supplies and uses of energy when carrying out such tasks.
That exemption shall apply to persons engaged in the activities set out in this point only where they perform investment activities or provide investment services relating to commodity derivatives in order to carry out those activities. That exemption shall not apply with regard to the operation of a secondary market, including a platform for secondary trading in financial transmission rights;
o
CSDs except as provided for in Article 73 of Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council .
2
The rights conferred by this Directive shall not extend to the provision of services as counterparty in transactions carried out by public bodies dealing with public debt or by members of the ESCB performing their tasks as provided for by the TFEU and by Protocol No 4 on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank or performing equivalent functions under national provisions.
3
The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to clarify for the purposes of point (c) of paragraph 1 when an activity is provided in an incidental manner.
4
ESMA shall develop draft regulatory technical standards to specify, for the purposes of point (j) of paragraph 1, the criteria for establishing when an activity is to be considered to be ancillary to the main business at a group level.
Those criteria shall take into account at least the following elements:
a
the need for ancillary activities to constitute a minority of activities at a group level;
b
the size of their trading activity compared to the overall market trading activity in that asset class.
In determining the extent to which ancillary activities constitute a minority of activities at a group level ESMA may determine that the capital employed for carrying out the ancillary activity relative to the capital employed for carrying out the main business is to be considered. However, that factor shall in no case be sufficient to demonstrate that the activity is ancillary to the main business of the group.
The activities referred to in this paragraph shall be considered at a group level.
The elements referred to in the second and third subparagraphs shall exclude:
a
intra-group transactions as referred to in Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 that serve group-wide liquidity or risk management purposes;
b
transactions in derivatives which are objectively measurable as reducing risks directly relating to the commercial activity or treasury financing activity;
c
transactions in commodity derivatives and emission allowances entered into to fulfil obligations to provide liquidity on a trading venue, where such obligations are required by regulatory authorities in accordance with Union law or with national laws, regulations and administrative provisions, or by trading venues.
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.
Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of
23 July 2014
on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories and amending Directives 98/26/EC and 2014/65/EU and Regulation (EU) No 236/2012 (
OJ L 257, 28.8.2014, p. 1
).
Substituted by Directive (EU) 2016/1034 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 June 2016 amending Directive 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments (Text with EEA relevance).
Substituted by Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories and amending Directives 98/26/EC and 2014/65/EU and Regulation (EU) No 236/2012 (Text with EEA relevance).