Conclusions
To conclude, EUA’s and CER’s Daily Futures Contracts listed on ECX are financial instruments, and CO2 brokers wishing to trade in them need to examine the exemptions from MIFID provided for in Article 2 of the Directive.
Taking into account that definition of financial services and activities, pursuant to Section A of the Annex I do the Directive, has a particular broad extent and covers, inter alia, not only reception and transmission of orders in relation to one or more financial instruments, execution of orders on behalf of clients, and portfolio management, but also dealing on own account and investment advice (Section A names in that regard eight different categories), if the requirements for qualification under particular exemption for the given broker (depending, amongst other things, on the extent and the scope of it’s business activity) are not met, the said broker should register as an investment form and be subject to MIFID regulatory framework. This means, of course, many (“bureaucratic”, some may say) requirements and regulatory supervision.
Finally, it is appropriate to make the reservation that there are also other exceptions to the rules described in this article but because of it’s limited scope they are not mentioned.