Brussels, 1 November 2013 | Benchmarks serve as important and widely used price signals for the energy markets and play a vital role in the price risk mitigation efforts of the real economy. Europex, representing numerous major energy price and index providers, fully shares the assessment by the European Commission that the provision of transparent, robust and reliable reference prices is absolutely key to the well-functioning of commodity markets at European and global level.
Energy exchanges today are already comprehensively regulated by a wide set of rules and regulations with a particular focus on price formation, transparency and market integrity. Against this background, we suggest exempting regulated spot and derivatives energy market places from the governance and control requirements of the proposed benchmark regulation, as there is simply no need to make them comply with an additional and potentially different set of regulatory rules with the same or similar objectives. The same applies to Central Counter Parties (CCPs) which are evenly well regulated and subject to comprehensive oversight by regulatory authorities.
Please find more detailed remarks and suggestions in the attached position paper.
