ContextKeynote in Paris at an event of the industry committee in charge of the EU T+1 transition.
Why it mattersA practical guide to Europe's switch to one-day securities settlement (T+1), with the deadline now fixed.
- Europe's move to T+1 settlement is a large operational change.
- One weak link in the chain can disrupt settlement.
- Cross-border and custody chains create hard dependencies.
- Coordinate authorities and industry through working groups.
- Issue clear, workable guidance for different business models.
- Test early and market-wide before go-live.
Read the speech summary
1. From design to delivery
Speaking at an industry committee event in Paris on Europe's move to one-day settlement, ESMA Chair Verena Ross said the work has shifted from planning to execution. The switch date is fixed: 11 October 2027, as ESMA proposed in its 2024 report. She praised the industry committee's roadmap, handbook, checklist, testing plan and surveys as a model of public-private cooperation, and explained that the authorities' part is clarity, supervisory convergence and monitoring. The Commission's endorsement of the amended settlement-discipline standards is imminent, and the text then goes through the remaining institutional steps before it takes effect, and new rules on allocations and confirmations should start applying from 7 December 2026, because delays in those upstream steps would quickly turn into settlement pressure the next day.
2. What firms must do now
She asked firms to answer ESMA's consultation on revised allocation and confirmation guidelines, which closes on 7 July; to finish preparations, upgrading systems, improving static data and standing instructions, agreeing procedures with counterparties and cutting manual work, since automation is a precondition; and above all to check the readiness of the whole chain of clients, brokers, custodians, depositories, clearing houses, venues and vendors, because one weak link can strain everything. Testing must be built into plans for 2027, from internal to bilateral to market-wide. The shift, she concluded, is also a test of coordination, and promises lower costs and stronger capital markets.