THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

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

Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on indices used as benchmarks in financial instruments and financial contracts or to measure the performance of investment funds and amending Directives 2008/48/EC and 2014/17/EU and Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 [OJ L 171, 29.6.2016, p. 1.], and in particular the fourth subparagraph of Article 15(6) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) Article 15 of Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 requires the administrator of a benchmark that is based on input data from contributors to develop a code of conduct for that benchmark clearly specifying the contributors' responsi­bilities with respect to the contribution of input data. If an administrator provides a family of benchmarks consisting of more than one benchmark based on input data from contributors, a single code of conduct may be developed for the family of benchmarks. Paragraph 2 of Article 15 of that Regulation lists elements that must be included, as a minimum, in each code of conduct developed under that Article. No code of conduct is required if the benchmark is a regulated-data benchmark as defined in Article 3(1)(24) of that Regulation.

(2) In order to ensure that the benchmark is determined correctly, it is crucial that the input data provided by contributors has all the features required by the methodology and is complete. The code of conduct should therefore describe those features in sufficient detail and specify what data has to be taken into account by the contributor, what data the contributor may exclude and how the contributor is to transmit the input data to the administrator.