Cross sectoral work

The European Forum for Innovation Facilitators (EFIF) provides a platform for supervisors to regularly share experiences from their engagement with firms through innovation facilitators, to exchange technological expertise, and to reach common views on the regulatory treatment of innovative products, services and business models.

The EFIF was established following the 2019 Joint ESA report on regulatory sandboxes and innovation hubs which identified the need for greater coordination and cooperation between innovation facilitators to support the scaling up of FinTech across the EU single market. The 2019 report was updated in 2023 and presents, besides a list of innovation facilitators in the EEA, recommendations and considerations towards national competent authorities (NCAs), the ESAs and the European Commission to further enhance the role and efficiency of innovation facilitators in the financial sector. 

The 2023 Joint ESAs Report on Innovation Facilitators is available here. 

The EU Digital Finance Platform is a new collaborative space bringing together industry and public authorities. Among other functionalities, such as the European fintech map, it enables the cross-border testing framework. You will find here the innovation facilitators in the EU.

Innovation hubs

As of October 2023, 41 innovation hubs exist across 30 countries in the EEA. 
 

Regulatory sandboxes

As of October 2023, 14 regulatory sandboxes exist across 12 countries in the EEA. 

For further information on the procedural framework for cross-border testing click here.

The EFIF Taxonomy of Financial Innovation helps the ESAs and the EFIF members to classify financial innovation by i) sector, ii) service and activities and iii) enabling technology(-ies) with the aim of supporting their innovation monitoring tasks and policy-related work. The Taxonomy of Financial Innovation is not meant to be binding, nor is it meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is meant to be indicative to cater to the evolving nature of financial innovations. The Taxonomy of Financial Innovation is complemented by a Glossary.

For further information about the EFIF, see the Terms of Reference.

The pan-European Systemic Cyber Incident Coordination Framework aims at gradually enabling an effective coordinated response at Union level in the event of a major cross-border ICT-related incident or related cyber-threat having a systemic impact on the Union’s financial sector. The EU-SCICF forum’s scope of action is the progressive development of this framework by advancing and testing relevant tools (e.g. procedures, arrangements) to support effective coordination between authorities in case of a systemic event. To this end, the forum will also support a network of authorities to convene during such an incident or threat. Further information can be found on the factsheet below.

The Joint Committee acts as a forum for the exchange of supervisory information, experiences and practices on financial conglomerates, through which the ESAs develop joint positions and agree on common acts in this area.

As part of its responsibilities, the Joint Committee maintains and publishes a list of identified financial conglomerates as required under the Financial Conglomerates Directive (Directive 2002/87/EC).

List of financial conglomerates 2024

The European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) promote transparency, simplicity and fairness in the market for consumer financial products or services, including by reviewing and coordinating financial literacy and education initiatives by the competent authorities. The three ESAs closely cooperate in the area of Financial Education in order to maximise the impact of their respective efforts.

Joint projects in 2022 include:

• High level conference on Financial Education
• Joint ESAs thematic repository on financial education and digitalisation initiatives of National Competent Authorities (NCAs)
• Joint ESAs thematic report based on the analysis of the information collated in the thematic repository

Regulation (EU) 2019/2088) (the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation) sets out ESG disclosure requirements for a broad range of financial market participants, financial advisers and financial products. The European Commission has published in the Official Journal the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/1288. The delegated regulation was updated in 2023 and published by the European Commission in the Official Journal as Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/363. For the convenience of financial market participants preparing the financial product disclosures referred to in Articles 8, 9 and 11 of the SFDR, the three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA) provide an editable version of the templates contained in that Regulation. Please note that the ESAs accept no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the editable version. Only European Union documents published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) are deemed authentic. For further information, please consult the legal notice of the OJ.

The European Supervisory Authorities have also published an updated supervisory statement on the application of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and a statement providing clarifications on the draft Regulatory Technical Standards issued under SFDR.