THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments and amending Directive 2002/92/EC and Directive 2011/61/EU [OJ L 173, 12.6.2014, p. 349.], and in particular the third subparagraph of Article 50(2) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) Clock synchronisation has a direct impact in many areas. In particular it contributes to ensuring that post-trade transparency data can readily be part of a reliable consolidated tape. It is also essential for conducting cross-venue monitoring of orders and detecting instances of market abuse and allows for a clearer comparison between the transaction and the market conditions prevailing at the time of their execution.

(2) The number of orders received every second by a trading venue can be very high, much higher than that of executed transactions. This may extend to several thousands of orders per second depending on the trading venue, the type of members or participants or clients of a given trading venue, and the financial instruments' volatility and liquidity. As a result, a time granularity of one second would not be sufficient for the purposes of effective market manipulation surveillance of certain types of trading activities. Therefore, it is necessary to establish minimum granularity requirements for recording the date and time of reportable events by operators of trading venues and their members or participants.