Europe Reg Desk

Sunday, 2026-07-26 · inaugural edition — covering the past week (20–26 Jul 2026)

EU & ESMA

ESMA issues a public statement on T+1 readiness ahead of the October 2027 transition. The statement (20 July) sets out ESMA's expectations for market participants, CSDs and trading venues preparing for the EU's move to a T+1 settlement cycle, flagging funding, FX and securities lending processes as the areas most exposed to timing risk. It is a preparatory nudge rather than new binding rules, but it is the clearest signal yet of ESMA's supervisory priorities for the transition. ESMA statement

AFM and AMF publish a joint position paper on EU supervisory centralisation. The Dutch and French regulators (22 July) set out five conditions — including clear scope, adequate resourcing and preserved national market knowledge — for the European Commission's proposed Market Integration and Supervision Package to work in practice. It is a bilateral input into an EU-level debate, not a rule change, but relevant to trading venues watching how supervision of markets may be recentralised in Brussels. AMF press release

United Kingdom

London Stock Exchange to launch "LSE 24," a new 24/5 near-continuous equity venue. Announced 21 July, LSE 24 will run separately from the Main Market from 17:00 to 07:50 UK time (with a 30-minute end-of-day pause), targeting algorithmic and round-the-clock demand without altering the Main Market's existing hours. Client testing starts by end-2026, with ETPs the first asset class to trade there in H1 2027, subject to regulatory approval — a structural parallel to the US exchanges' push into overnight equity trading. LSEG press release

National & exchanges

No other material national-regulator or exchange market-structure developments this week from BaFin/Deutsche Börse, Consob/Borsa Italiana, CNMV/BME, SIX or Nasdaq Nordic.

Informational only — summaries of public regulatory sources; not advice.