A spokesman for the European Parliament has told Compliance Matters that the various organs of the European Union have agreed in principle to put off the implementation date for the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive from 3rd January 2017 to 3rd January 2018.

When asked about this, the spokesman (himself a member of the parliament called Markus Ferber) said: "Indeed, the European Commission has informally suggested to delay the entry into force of MiFID II by a year and the European Parliament has indicated that it would in general consider such a move if certain conditions are met. Those conditions are that the level-2 provisions foreseen under MiFID II/MiFIR [MiFIR is the accompanying regulation] are adopted by the commission as soon as possible and that the adopted files reflect the priorities that have been flagged by the European Parliament.

"However, so far the European Commission has not presented an official legislative proposal yet. Such a proposal would in any case run through the normal legislative procedure, which even if things go very smoothly, would take at least a couple of weeks. We expect the commission to present a formal proposal in January. Therefore, predicting the exact date when a final decision is made is difficult at this time.

"In any case, I can assure you that the European Parliament is very committed to establishing clarity about the content of the implementing legislation as well as about the timeline as soon as possible."

The implementation date is embedded in law and therefore requires the full EU legislative process if it is to be changed. Compliance Matters will report further developments when they happen.