The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, has today published its latest edition of its Spotlight on Markets Newsletter.

Your one-stop-shop in the world of EU financial markets focused in May on various important topics such as the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) Progress Reports on Greenwashing and mainly on ESMA’s key findings. For the first time, the ESAs agreed on a high-level understanding of the phenomenon. The ESMA Progress Report helps to better understand greenwashing and provides market participants and regulators with a shared reference point in dealing with it. ESMA assesses which areas of the sustainable investment value chain are more exposed to the risk of greenwashing. Our work on Sustainable Finance is described in this video.

ESMA also launched its Central Counterparties Stress Test. New in this exercise is the inclusion of climate risk, on top of the assessment of liquidity, credit and concentration risks. In addition, we called for legislative amendments to prevent undue costs in funds. The proposal aims at preventing investors from being charged with undue costs and ensuring appropriate compensation for investors. See video.

Last, ESMA issued a public statement to warn investors of risks that arise when investment firms offer both regulated and unregulated products and/or services.