Fair Trading In Wholesale Energy Markets: In 2017 ACER Processed More Than 90 Million Transactions

ACER stepped up its monitoring activities in 2017 by implementing an automatic screening process for transactions of energy products traded on European wholesale markets. For this purpose, the Agency developed and calibrated specific alerts to detect instances of unusual trading behaviour in electricity and gas. Last year, more than 90 million transactions for a variety of spot and derivative products were reported to the Agency.

With its work, the Agency has made progress towards further improving the integrity of wholesale energy markets, even though full coverage of the EU wholesale energy markets would require ACER receiving significantly more resources from the EU Budget.

In the same time-frame, the Agency identified or received notification of 85 instances of potential market abuse under REMIT. By the end of the year, the Agency, in close cooperation with National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), had reviewed 137 cases across the EU, many opened the previous years. In order to ensure a coordinated application of REMIT, the Agency engaged in more than 500 interactions, including notification of suspicious events to NRAs and requests for information from NRAs.

Further to foster a consistent application of REMIT in the area of market abuse, the Agency published a Guidance Note on ‘Wash Trades’. A ‘Transmission Capacity hoarding’ Guidance Note will follow in the first quarter of 2018.

For those interested in joining the REMIT teams in ACER, the Agency has launched two calls for expression of interest for the establishment of a reserve list for the positions of IT Service Officer and Policy Officer - Market Analyst. You can access them here.