ESMA Seeks More Consistent Enforcement After Over 950 EEA Actions

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, is urging national authorities across the European Economic Area (EEA) to narrow enforcement gaps after more than 950 actions in 2025.

The tally of administrative sanctions and other measures was little changed from each of the previous two years. Germany, France and Spain together accounted for about two-thirds of the EEA’s total fine value, concentrating much of the region’s penalties in three jurisdictions.

The figures appear in ESMA’s third sanctions review, which compiles enforcement information reported under EU financial laws within the authority’s remit. The review covers national actions across the EEA and focuses on how regulators apply capital markets rules.

Enforcement activity centered mainly on breaches of the Market Abuse Regulation and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation. Authorities also made greater use of settlements.

Practices differed across jurisdictions in how many sanctions were imposed, the kinds of measures used, the level of fines and reliance on settlement procedures. ESMA is pressing for closer alignment, with particular attention to places where limited enforcement cannot be explained by the size of the local market.

Sanction totals and fine values are not, on their own, a measure of how well a national supervisor is doing. Supervisory effectiveness ultimately depends on whether market participants comply with the rules, while enforcement remains one part of a broader supervisory toolkit.

ESMA plans to encourage more exchanges among national securities and markets authorities on applying capital markets rules consistently. Those discussions will include individual cases, with the aim of producing similar enforcement outcomes for comparable violations across the EU, wherever they occur.