The European Commission has launched infringement proceedings against 19 member states of the European Union whom it states are failing in transposing the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) into local law. MiFID II is due to go into effect on January 3, 2018, and the deadline for transposition into local law was July 3, 2017.

The member states involved are Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Such proceedings are launched against a backdrop of industry calls for further delay to the start date of MiFID II to allow affected firms more time to prepare for the significant changes that the directive mandates. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently stated that firms would not be punished for not complying with MiFID II if they have taken sufficient steps to meet the new requirements (for more information, please see the September 22, 2017 edition of Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest). Steven Maijoor, European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Chairman, re-iterated in September, however, that there would be no further delay to MiFID II, which was originally due to go into effect in January (for more information, please see the October 6, 2017 edition of Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest ).

More information on the EU’s current infringement proceedings is available here.