On March 12, 2021, ISDA submitted a response to the European Commission’s (EC) consultation on the establishment of a European Single Access Point (ESAP) for financial and non-financial data. In its response, ISDA endorses the creation of ESAP, highlighting the benefits for cross-border access to meaningful information and the reporting of environmental, social and governance-related information. With respect to the scope of ESAP, ISDA recommends that the eventual administrators of ESAP should focus on a small number of data points at the initial stage, characterized by low-frequency and raw company level data, such as data resulting from the Transparency Directive, Accounting Directive and Audit Directive as well as the revised Non-Financial Reporting Directive. In addition, the ISDA response discusses the usability and data governance of ESAP by highlighting the potential benefits of the Common Domain Model.

The EC is expected to launch a legislative proposal on the creation of ESAP in the second half of 2021.