The European Commission adopted yesterday an Implementing Regulation establishing a list of ‘critical’ benchmarks, i.e. those indexes that are of particular importance for financial markets and consumer contracts.
This enables supervisors to make use of certain provisions of the Benchmarks Regulation (EU 2016/1011) in advance of its entry into application in 2018. EURIBOR (Euro Interbank Offered Rate), one of the most important interest rate indexes in the EU, is the first to be included in the list established by today’s Implementing Regulation.
The Commission will review and update this list regularly and will include, in due course, other benchmarks that fulfill certain criteria. This Implementing Regulation will ensure that supervisors are in a position to allow the continuation of ‘critical’ benchmarks where their cessation would have a severe adverse impact on market participants and undermine the functioning and integrity of markets. In particular, classifying EURIBOR as a ‘critical’ benchmark will facilitate supervisors in requesting data contributions from banks, if they deem it necessary to ensure the benchmark’s representativeness.
