ESMA's choices in the Guidelines are of pure technical nature and do not imply strategic decisions or policy choices.

ESMA's options are limited to the approach it took to drafting these Guidelines and the need to ensure clarity, consistency of reporting and uniformity of formats.

The main policy decisions have already been analysed and published by the European Commission under the primary legislation, i.e. Regulation (EU) No 2019/834 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2019. Similarly, ESMA conducted an assessment of the proportionality of the policy choices when submitting the draft technical and implementing standards to the European Commission on 16 December 2020.