AFME Voices Live at Compliance and Legal 2026: In Conversation with Natasha Cazenave Executive Director, ESMA

think that's a really interesting point sort of bringing us full circle to simplification because one of the points we've made from an afp perspective is you're right the speed of the need to respond to um sort of cyber incidents is there but of course we have a whole backlog of reporting requirements from various ncas and countries you know please write report much of it duplicative what happened you know, under DORA, under CRA, et cetera.

And the point we're trying to make is we can't spend our whole time doing reports.

What we need to be doing is spending time fixing problems.

And I think this is where simplification has a real opportunity to sort of say, actually, what's really important here? As you say, dealing with vulnerabilities rather than spending hours and days and weeks on multiple reports on the same incident, et cetera.

So I think that kind of response is helpful for us to understand.

a couple of questions here which are slightly linked um relationship with the uk now it's defined as a third country as per the latest mou um you know the ability to for firms to work across europe etc etc from the uk and vice versa any thoughts on that at this point in time I

think it's mainly a political discussion, but from a regulatory perspective, what I can say is that the cooperation is very high, and it has actually never been broken with our colleagues from the UK.

We have regular conversations with them at every opportunity.

We have invited regularly the head of the UK FCA, to our board at ESMA to make sure that that conversation and that cooperation is there.

We follow what they do.

They monitor what we do.

So we try also to have consistent approaches where we can.

I said also the supervisory level when we have, for example, supervision of similar entities like it is the case for credit rating agencies.

We have colleges where we sit at the same table and we engage with the firms together.

So really the cooperation is very high and to the extent that the framework allows us, we're very mindful of trying to make sure it is as coherent as possible, but then each with our mandates and each with our legal framework.

So that is something that, you know, sometimes there are limitations to how far you can go.