The APA and ARM Association
APARMA
APARMA represents the views of its members in relation to regulations and laws impacting APA businesses and the associated supervisory framework and to promote dialogue with policymakers and regulators.
ID: 488265146732-81
Lobbying Activity
Response to Supervisory fees for consolidated tape providers
5 Mar 2025
We appreciate the Commissions work in completing the supervisory framework for CTPs and welcome this opportunity to make further comments. Firstly, APARMA would like to emphasise that ESMA's costs in supervising APAs and ARMs should not be inflated by costs for projects that are unnecessary or not directly related to their supervision, or that relate to the supervision of CTPs, and the estimate of expenditure included in ESMA's budget should be set accordingly. We believe that the fees charged to APAs and ARMs subject to ESMA supervision are excessive and should be reduced by a more appropriate ESMA budget allocation reflecting only the direct costs of their supervision. In addition, the proposed Article 1a (b) would create an uneven playing field between NCA-supervised DRSPs and ESMA-supervised DRSPs, if all cost for the reimbursement of NCAs that have carried out work pursuant to MiFIR would be recovered in full by the supervisory fees charged to ESMA-supervised DRSPs. Based on the above, we would suggest removing the proposed Article 1a entirely. Although the fee amendments proposed in Article 2(c) contemplate a CTP potentially also offering additional data reporting services, we do not believe a CTP could offer APA services without this creating unacceptable conflicts of interest and believe this should not be permitted under MiFIR Article 27db and the draft RTS on the authorisation of CTPs. It would be more appropriate to amend the proposed Article 2(c) to be "for CTPs an authorisation fee of EUR 100 000 for the first authorisation". We also notice that supervisory fees are calculated separately for APAs/ARMs (Article 3) and CTPs (Article 3a) but turnover for purposes of the calculation is combined for all three in Article 4(2). As the calculation of turnover should be separate for APAs/ARMs and CTPs, Article 4(2) throughout should refer to "ARM or APA or, as applicable, CTP" or equivalent to clarify that these are separate calculations." As always, we remain available for further discussion or if you had questions on our comments. The APA & ARM Association (APARMA)
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