ESAs publish consolidated Q&As on SFDR and PRIIPs KID

Neither the SFDR nor the PRIIPs Key Information Document (KID) have been especially straightforward when it comes to interpretating what the relevant rules require.

This has led to an array of Q&As being published by the European Commission (the Commission) and the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) - ESMA, the EBA and EIOPA. 

If you've found it hard to keep track of where to find all of these and making sure you haven't missed any, you're in luck.

On 17 May 2023, the ESAs published two new documents

• Consolidated Q&A on the SFDR and
• Consolidated Q&As on the PRIIPs KID

In each case, the document contains

(a) responses given by the European Commission to questions requiring interpretation of EU law (these are coloured blue in the documents) and
(b) responses generated by the ESAs, which relate to the practical application or implementation of the relevant rules (which are left uncoloured).

It should be noted that neither document adds new guidance or interpretation.

Looking at each in turn

Q&As on SFDR

The consolidated document pulls together the following:

• the Commission's Q&As of 6 April 2023, made public on 14 April 2023
  These responded to the ESAs' questions of 9 September 2022.

• the Commission's Q&As of 17 May 2022
  These responded to the ESAs questions of 10 December 2021. The answer to Q9 was amended by the Commission's Annex of 6 April 2023,  made public on 14 April 2023

• the Commission's Q&As of 14 July 2021, made public on 26 July 2021
  These responded to the ESAs' questions of 7 January 2021.
  A corrigendum dated 23 November 2021, corrected the order of Q's 1 and 2, while the answer to Q4 was amended the Commission's Annex of 6 April 2023, made public on 14 April 2023 and

• the ESAs' Q&As of 17 November 2022, on the SFDR Level 2 RTS

See our client notes for summaries of the various sets of Q&As and a review of their key impacts on asset managers:

• Simmons & Simmons client note on the Commission's Q&As made public on 14 April 2023
• Simmons & Simmons client note on the Commission Q&As of 17 May 2022
• Simmons & Simmons client note on the Commission Q&As made public on 26 July 2021
• Simmons & Simmons client note on the ESAs' Q&As of 17 November 2022

Q&As on the PRIIPs KID

Towards the end of last year, there was something of a rush of PRIIPs Q&As.

The Level 2 rules on what the PRIIPs KID must contain were originally set out in 2017 in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/653 (the KID Delegated Regulation).

This, though, was amended by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2268 (the Amending Delegated Regulation) and the vast majority of these changes took effect from 1 January 2023.

The ESAs published updated Q&As on 14 November 2022 - these dealt with both

(a) the original rules in the 2017 KID Delegated Regulation and
(b) amendments made by the Amending Delegated Regulation, which was about to apply (from 1 January 2023).

Inevitably, some of the Q&As in the November 2022 update related to requirements which were changed by the Amending Delegated Regulation.

These would, then, need to be revised or deleted in order for them to stay relevant after 1 January 2023, when the Amending Delegated Regulation came into effect.

As a result, the ESAs published further ESAs' Q&As on 21 December 2022, which dealt with the necessary revisions and deletions.

The new Q&As show the various revisions (by either inserting new, or deleting, obsolete text) so the Q&As all relate to the current Level 1 and Level 2 texts, but add no new guidance.

See our summaries of the ESAS' Q&As of

• 14 November 2022 here and
• 21 December 2022 here