Poland says the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the country’s central securities depository will remain under domestic supervision under the EU Council’s current position on a major reform of European capital-market oversight.
The clarification follows the 9 October agreement by EU finance ministers on the Market Integration and Supervision Package, or MISP, which would transfer direct supervision of some of Europe’s most significant cross-border market institutions to the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA.
Poland’s Finance Ministry said on 12 October that the criteria agreed by member states mean both the Warsaw Stock Exchange, GPW, and Krajowy Depozyt Papierów Wartościowych, KDPW, will remain supervised by Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority, KNF.
The ministry issued the clarification after what it described as misleading claims that supervision of the two institutions would be transferred to ESMA.
The distinction is commercially important for Poland’s capital market, but the legal position is not yet final. The Council has agreed key elements of its negotiating position; the legislation still requires further EU legislative negotiations.
EU wants more direct supervision of major market infrastructure
The MISP package is one of the central measures in the EU’s Savings and Investments Union, an initiative designed to make European capital markets more integrated and improve the flow of private savings into businesses and investment.
Under the Council’s agreed position, direct supervision of the most significant cross-border trading venues and major post-trading institutions would move from national authorities to ESMA.
That group could include certain stock exchanges, central securities depositories and central counterparties whose size and cross-border importance meet the thresholds in the eventual legislation.
ESMA would also gain a strengthened governance structure, including a full-time executive board responsible for decisions involving directly supervised entities.
GPW and KDPW remain below the Council’s criteria
The Polish Finance Ministry says the Council compromise uses quantitative criteria to decide which exchanges and securities-depository institutions become directly supervised by ESMA.
According to the ministry, GPW and KDPW do not meet those criteria and therefore remain under KNF supervision.
Finance Minister Andrzej Domański reinforced that interpretation in comments to PAP Biznes on 12 October, saying Poland had sought to protect the interests of its domestic capital market while supporting deeper European integration.
He said the negotiated solution means the Warsaw Stock Exchange and KDPW will not be placed under direct ESMA supervision.
This is not a transfer back to Poland after an earlier EU takeover. GPW and KDPW are currently supervised domestically; the issue is whether the new legislation would move them into ESMA’s direct-supervision perimeter in future.
What GPW and KDPW do
GPW is the operator of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, Poland’s main regulated market for listed shares and other securities.
KDPW is Poland’s central securities depository. It provides core post-trade infrastructure including securities registration, settlement and other services that allow transactions completed on capital markets to be finalised and recorded.
Both institutions therefore sit at the centre of Poland’s financial-market infrastructure.
KNF, Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority, is the domestic regulator responsible for oversight of the Polish financial market, including the capital-market sector.
ESMA performs an EU-wide role, developing supervisory standards, coordinating national regulators and directly supervising selected categories of entities where EU law gives it that authority.
National supervision does not mean isolation from EU rules
Keeping GPW and KDPW under KNF would not remove them from the EU regulatory system.
They would still operate under European financial-market legislation, while ESMA would retain broader responsibilities for supervisory convergence and consistent application of EU law.
The Council’s model is therefore not a choice between purely national regulation and purely European regulation.
Instead, it draws a line between institutions supervised directly by ESMA and institutions whose day-to-day prudential or market supervision remains with national authorities operating within a common EU framework.
The Council says national authorities would also remain involved in the new system even where direct ESMA supervision applies, including through joint supervisory arrangements during the transition.
Why Poland wanted to keep supervision at home
Domański said Poland supports development of a stronger European capital market because deeper markets can make it easier for companies to raise financing within Europe rather than seeking capital elsewhere.
At the same time, Warsaw has argued that supervision should remain proportionate to the scale and cross-border significance of individual institutions.
For Poland, retaining KNF supervision over GPW and KDPW preserves direct domestic oversight of institutions that play a central role in the national market while allowing the country to participate in the wider EU integration project.
The Finance Ministry’s summary of the 9 October ECOFIN meeting says Poland considers the package strategically important for strengthening European capital markets but stresses that the agreed quantitative thresholds leave GPW and KDPW under KNF.
The package goes beyond exchanges and depositories
MISP is broader than the question of who supervises stock exchanges.
The package also covers central counterparties, asset-management rules, crypto-asset providers, market-operator structures and the EU’s distributed-ledger technology pilot regime.
The Council’s position would limit immediate direct ESMA supervision of crypto-asset service providers to the most significant cross-border firms rather than automatically bringing every provider under the EU authority.
It also supports a new voluntary Pan-European Market Operator framework, or PEMO, which could allow operators that do not otherwise meet the criteria for compulsory ESMA supervision to run multiple venues across the EU under a single licence and direct ESMA oversight.
The Council also agreed changes intended to reduce barriers for asset managers and make cross-border market activity less fragmented.
The reform is part of the Savings and Investments Union
The wider objective is to address a long-standing weakness in Europe’s financial system: the relatively limited role of capital markets in financing companies compared with bank lending and the large amount of household savings held in deposits.
The Council says roughly €10 trillion of EU household savings remain in low-yield bank deposits rather than being channelled through capital markets.
EU policymakers want more of that money to finance businesses, infrastructure and innovation while making European financial markets more competitive internationally.
The MISP package is intended to support that by reducing differences in supervision and making it easier for financial institutions and investment products to operate across national borders.
The Council agreement is not the final law
The most important legal caveat is that the 9 October agreement does not complete the EU legislative process.
The Council agreed the key elements of its negotiating position, and the text still has to proceed through formal Council adoption and negotiations with the European Parliament once Parliament establishes its own position.
The Council explicitly states that negotiations with Parliament are the next stage.
That means the supervisory perimeter can still change during the legislative process.
The Finance Ministry’s statement describes the consequences of the current Council compromise, not an irreversible exemption written into final EU law.
What it means for the Polish market now
For brokers, listed companies and market-infrastructure operators, there is no immediate change in who supervises GPW or KDPW.
KNF remains the relevant Polish authority.
The 12 October clarification is nevertheless significant because it establishes Poland’s understanding of one of the most politically sensitive parts of the Council deal: deeper EU-level supervision will apply to selected large cross-border institutions, but the country’s principal exchange and central securities depository remain outside that direct ESMA perimeter under the criteria agreed so far.
The next major development will come when the European Parliament adopts its own negotiating position and talks on the final legislation begin.
Until that process is complete, the safest description is that Poland has preserved national supervision of GPW and KDPW in the Council’s current MISP position — but the final EU rules have not yet been adopted.
