The Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo), an advisory body of the Eurosystem whose views do not necessarily represent those of the European Central Bank, has published a report mapping the remaining obstacles to integrating securities post-trade services in the European Union and setting out recommended follow-up actions and responsible addressees. Drawing on a stakeholder survey completed in 2024 and earlier barrier work, it concludes that many long-identified impediments continue to fragment cross-border issuance, custody, asset servicing, clearing and settlement. The report groups barriers into legal frameworks, issuer-investor processes, buyer-seller processes and transversal issues. It highlights high-impact frictions from differences in national securities, corporate and insolvency law (including uncertainty over rights in intermediated securities, corporate-events processing and constraints on the Central Securities Depositories Regulation’s “freedom of issuance”), and from tax processing, where withholding tax reporting, beneficial-owner concepts, relief-at-source availability, liability regimes and operational requirements remain highly divergent despite the Faster and Safer Relief of Excess Withholding Taxes Directive. Operationally, it flags the absence of a trusted “golden source” for securities reference and corporate events data, low compliance with corporate events and shareholder identification standards, continued practical limits on using cross-CSD settlement and choosing settlement location, and fragmented data and messaging practices (including ISO 15022 and ISO 20022 co-existence and inconsistent identifier usage). Recommended actions include renewed EU-wide legal analysis and improved transparency tools (for example, an insolvency-rule repository), tighter and clearer corporate-law disclosures supporting cross-border CSD services, issuer-to-issuer-CSD provision of machine-readable data, wider adoption of common data models and ISO 20022, further settlement-efficiency measures (including consistent use of place of settlement and standard settlement instructions), and a more harmonised “report once” approach to regulatory reporting and KYC/customer due diligence. The paper links some settlement recommendations to preparations for the planned move to a T+1 standard securities settlement cycle by 11 October 2027, proposing reliance on already-identified industry actions where applicable and potential AMI-SeCo monitoring and support beyond the changeover. It also commits AMI-SeCo to establish a framework for tracking progress and monitoring compliance to address the follow-up gap observed after earlier barrier reports.
European Central Bank 2025-09-29
European Central Bank advisory group AMI-SeCo issues recommendations on remaining barriers to EU securities post-trade integration
The Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo) published a report identifying barriers to integrating EU securities post-trade services and recommending actions to address legal, operational, and data fragmentation issues. Key recommendations include enhanced legal analysis, improved transparency tools, and wider adoption of common data models and ISO 20022. The report links settlement recommendations to the upcoming T+1 securities settlement cycle transition by October 2027, with AMI-SeCo committed to monitoring progress and compliance.