The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator,
has announced its recognition of two central counterparties (CCPs) established in the United
States (U.S.) as Tier 1 CCPs under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).
These are the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) and the Options Clearing
Corporation (OCC).
ESMA, on 27 June 2022, recognized, for the first time, both FICC, which is authorized and
supervised by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and OCC, which are jointly
authorized and supervised by the SEC and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC), as Tier 1 CCPs under Article 25 of EMIR. This follows the European Commission’s
adoption, on 4 April 2022, of the amendments to the Commission Implementing Decision (EU)
2021/85 on the equivalence to EMIR’s requirements of the US regulatory framework for CCPs
that are authorized and supervised by the SEC, as well as by the Commission Implementing
Decision (EU) 2022/552.
The detailed list of recognized TC-CCPs is published on the ESMA website.