Legal development

EU EMIR: first AAR technical standards published in Official Journal

By Daniel Franks and Kirsty McAllister-Jones

12 February 2026

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    Key points

    • On 6 February 2026, EU Regulation 2026/305 was published in the Official Journal of the EU.
    • The Regulation contains technical standards detailing how market participants must comply with the EMIR 3 active account requirement (AAR) and related operational and reporting requirements. The EU EMIR provisions that the Regulation supplements are summarised in the Annex.
    • The technical standards are aligned with ESMA's proposals (as amended), with no substantive changes. In particular, there is no change to the parameters of the AAR representativeness requirement, which requires a certain number of in-scope transactions per reference period to be cleared through an EU CCP.
    • The Regulation will enter into force on 26 February 2026. This means that the first AAR compliance report will be due by 31 January 2027, demonstrating compliance from 26 February 2026 onwards.
    • These technical standards do not cover the Article 7d obligation to annually report details of UK and EU clearing. A separate consultation on this is expected in due course.
    • ESMA has also previously published level 3 Question and Answer guidance on the AAR.

    Annex

    Scope of technical standards

    The EU EMIR provisions supplemented by the technical standards in the new Regulation are summarised below.

    EU EMIR provision Summary of requirement  Article in new Regulation 
    Article 7a(3)(a) 

    Maintain a permanently functional account with an authorised EU CCP.

    Establish appropriate legal, IT, and other arrangements. 

    Article 1

    Article 7a(3)(b) and (c)

    Maintain adequate resources to support increased clearing of transactions previously cleared through UK CCPs.

    Article 2

    Article 7a(4)

    Stress tests the above arrangements at least annually.

    Article 3

    Article 7a(1)

    Clear a representative number of transactions through an EU CCP.

    Articles 4, 5 and 6

    Article 7b

    Report on AAR compliance every six months.

    Articles 7, 8, 9 and 10

    The information provided is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all developments in the law and practice, or to cover all aspects of those referred to.
    Readers should take legal advice before applying it to specific issues or transactions.

    Key Contacts