Research European Commodity Market Regulations - Part 1 | Page 10

European Energy Market Regulations V3.1 REMIT Rules Overview The objective of REMIT is to promote market integrity and transparency in the European gas and power markets, and it entered into force in December 2011. The EU-level Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) are responsible for implementing the rules with local National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) enforcing them by implementing national laws. It applies to all physical wholesale gas, power, LNG and emission trading in Europe, and derivatives based on them. REMIT is an EU level “Regulation”, which each country must implement. ACER publishes “guidance” on how it thinks the rules should be implemented but these are non-binding. REMIT has two pillars: Inside Information – From December 2011 it was prohibited to trade using inside information. The information in scope relates to physical information that could be used to the receiving party's advantage, such as knowledge of an unplanned outage. If in possession of such information, market participants may only trade under very limited circumstances. The approach to compliance so far has been to publish the information as soon as possible usually on a company website (known as the “REMIT Page”). The information can also be published to transparency platforms managed by certain parties, such as the National Grid in the UK. Prohibition of Market Manipulation ‐ Once REMIT is “implemented” by the European parliament, it will be prohibited to attempt to or actually manipulate the markets. The ACER guidance contains many details of what comprises market manipulation, divided into: a) false or misleading transactions, b) price positioning c) transactions involving deception and, d) dissemination of misleading information. In addition to prohibiting this activity, REMIT requires that all trade and fundamental data be reported to ACER 6 months after the rules come in. This gives rise to the second trade-reporting requirement, which is outlined in the section below. © Commodity Technology Advisory LLC and ETR Advisory Ltd, 2013, All Rights Reserved. v3.1 November 13th, 2013 10