ESMA Says Market Data Quality Improved in 2025 Report

The European Securities and Markets Authority published its 2025 report on the quality and use of regulatory data, saying the latest review shows improved quality, wider use and further digital progress across EU market supervision.

The report is relevant for brokers because much of modern supervision depends on transaction reports, transparency data, reference data and other machine-readable submissions. When that data is late, inconsistent or misclassified, regulators have a weaker view of execution venues, instrument coverage and trading behaviour.

ESMA said it would host a webinar on 18 June to present the report’s main findings. The release also links the work to ESMA’s broader data strategy, which aims to make regulatory reporting more usable for supervision and reduce unnecessary burden where reporting frameworks overlap.

Why it matters

Data quality is a market-structure issue. Better reporting can improve surveillance of abusive trading, help regulators compare venue activity and make it easier to spot weaknesses in best execution or post-trade transparency.

For brokers and active traders, the impact is usually indirect but important. Firms with weak reporting controls face higher remediation and enforcement risk, while clean reference and transaction data can reduce breaks in downstream analytics, client statements and venue reporting.

What to watch next

Watch whether ESMA turns the report into concrete reporting clean-up priorities, especially around MiFIR transaction data, transparency calculations and simplification projects that could affect how brokers and venues submit data.