MiFID II best execution, refreshed: the new order-execution-policy RTS
The European Commission has adopted new rules on how investment firms build and test their order-execution policies — and, for the first time in years, it has repealed a piece of MiFID II reporting rather than adding to it. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825 replaces the criteria behind “best execution” and scraps the RTS 27 and RTS 28 reports that firms and venues have published since 2018. The substance changes less than the paperwork does. This piece covers what the new RTS requires, what disappears, the transition timeline, and how a firm sequences the work.
1. What changed
Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825, adopted on 14 April 2026 and published in the Official Journal, supplements Directive 2014/65/EU (MiFID II) with regulatory technical standards specifying the criteria investment firms must take into account when establishing and assessing the effectiveness of their order-execution policies — the “best execution” obligation under MiFID II Article 27. The new RTS sits within the wider MiFID II Review package (Directive (EU) 2024/790 and the accompanying MiFIR amendments) and follows a multi-year process: ESMA consulted on the technical standards, published its final report and draft RTS, and the Commission then adopted the delegated act built on that work.
The same act repeals Commission Delegated Regulations (EU) 2017/575 and (EU) 2017/576 — the RTS known in the market as RTS 27 (execution-quality data published by trading venues and systematic internalisers) and RTS 28 (annual top-five-execution-venues reports published by investment firms). Both have effectively been in abeyance since ESMA’s 2024 deprioritisation statement told supervisors not to enforce them pending this reform; the new act now formally removes them from the rulebook.
2. What does not change
Firms still must:
- Maintain an order-execution policy covering the execution factors (price, cost, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, size, nature, and any other relevant consideration).
- Monitor the effectiveness of that policy and their execution arrangements, and correct any deficiencies.
- Be able to demonstrate to clients, on request, that orders were executed in accordance with the policy.
What the new RTS reworks is how a firm builds and evidences the policy and its effectiveness review — replacing the old data-publication regime with criteria the firm applies internally and can produce to its supervisor on demand.
3. Why RTS 27 and RTS 28 are gone
RTS 27 required trading venues, market makers and systematic internalisers to publish quarterly execution-quality data per financial instrument. RTS 28 required investment firms to publish an annual report of their top five execution venues by trading volume, per client-order class, plus a qualitative assessment of execution quality obtained. In practice, supervisors and industry converged on the view that the published data was too granular to be useful to retail clients and too costly to produce relative to its supervisory value — ESMA formally told National Competent Authorities to deprioritise supervisory action on RTS 28 reporting from 2024, well before this repeal.
Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825 completes that process: the publication obligations disappear, and the substantive criteria for what makes an execution policy — and its ongoing effectiveness review — adequate are set out afresh in the new RTS, tied more closely to a firm’s actual monitoring and governance process than to standardised published tables.
4. The transition timeline
- 14 April 2026 — Commission adoption of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825.
- Entry into force — the twentieth day following publication in the Official Journal.
- 12 February 2028 — the date of application. Firms have roughly eighteen months from adoption to revise their order-execution policies, internal monitoring arrangements and any supporting technology before the new criteria bind.
Eighteen months sounds generous, but the practical work is not trivial: it touches the execution-policy document itself, the internal monitoring/MI that feeds the effectiveness review, and — for firms that built automated pipelines around the old RTS 27/28 data feeds — the retirement or repurposing of that infrastructure.
5. Who this affects
Every MiFID II investment firm providing execution services is in scope, across all six jurisdictions this site covers: Spain (CNMV), France (AMF), Italy (CONSOB), Germany (BaFin), Luxembourg (CSSF) and the Netherlands (AFM). It also reaches payments and e-money firms that route client orders to third parties for execution as an ancillary service, and any firm reporting under the parallel MiFIR transaction-reporting regimes, since execution-venue data and transaction-reporting data often draw from the same internal systems.
6. Three worked examples
- Firm still publishing RTS 28 reports out of caution. An investment firm has kept publishing its annual top-five-venues report since 2024 even after ESMA’s deprioritisation statement, unsure whether the obligation still applied. Rule: Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825 formally repeals Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/576 (RTS 28). Action: the firm can retire the publication process once the repeal takes effect, redirecting that effort into the new effectiveness-review documentation the 2026/825 RTS actually requires. Outcome: less publication overhead, but the firm still needs evidence of an effective execution-policy review to show a supervisor on request.
- Firm building a 2028 remediation plan. A mid-sized brokerage’s compliance function is scoping what changes before 12 February 2028. Rule: the new RTS’s criteria for establishing and assessing execution-policy effectiveness replace the old ones. Action: the firm maps its current execution policy and monitoring MI against the new criteria, identifies gaps in how it evidences the effectiveness review, and sequences policy redrafting, MI rebuild and staff training across the transition window rather than leaving it to the final quarter. Outcome: the policy and its supporting evidence are ready well before the application date, rather than a rushed rewrite in early 2028.
- Payments firm with an ancillary execution service. An EMI offering a securities-trading feature alongside its core payments business routes client orders to a third party for execution. Rule: MiFID II Article 27 and the new RTS apply to it in the same way as to a standalone investment firm, proportionate to the nature and scale of the service. Action: it reviews whether its order-routing arrangement and any client disclosures already meet the new effectiveness-review criteria, rather than assuming the obligation is lighter because execution is ancillary to its main business. Outcome: the firm avoids treating best execution as an afterthought bolted onto a payments product.
7. Old regime vs new regime
| Before Reg. (EU) 2026/825 | From 12 February 2028 | |
|---|---|---|
| Execution-policy criteria | Set under the original MiFID II framework | Set by the new RTS under Reg. (EU) 2026/825 |
| Venue execution-quality data | RTS 27 quarterly publication (Reg. (EU) 2017/575) | Repealed |
| Firm top-five-venues report | RTS 28 annual publication (Reg. (EU) 2017/576) | Repealed |
| Underlying Article 27 duty | All sufficient steps for best possible result | Unchanged |
8. FAQ
Do I still need to publish an RTS 28 report?
No. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/825 repeals Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/576 (RTS 28), formalising what ESMA had already told supervisors to deprioritise from 2024. The underlying best-execution duty continues, but the standardised annual publication is gone.
When does the new regime actually apply?
From 12 February 2028. The Regulation was adopted on 14 April 2026 and entered into force twenty days after Official Journal publication, but its substantive application is deferred to give firms time to update policies and systems.
Does MiFID II Article 27 itself change?
No. The core “all sufficient steps” best-execution obligation in Directive 2014/65/EU is unchanged. What changes is the RTS specifying the criteria for the execution policy and how its effectiveness is assessed, plus the repeal of RTS 27/28.
Is this the same reform as MiFIR “report once”?
No, though both sit within the wider MiFID II/MiFIR Review. The “report once” initiative targets transaction reporting under MiFIR, EMIR and SFTR. This Delegated Regulation targets the order-execution-policy criteria and the RTS 27/28 publication regime specifically.
Does this apply to firms outside the six countries this site covers?
Yes — it is an EU-wide RTS under MiFID II, applying uniformly across all member states; the six-country coverage here reflects this site’s scope, not a limit on where the rule applies.
9. What to do, today
- Confirm whether your firm has already stopped RTS 27/28 publication following ESMA’s 2024 deprioritisation guidance, and if not, plan the wind-down once the repeal takes effect.
- Start mapping your current execution policy and monitoring MI against the new RTS criteria well before 12 February 2028 — eighteen months is enough time only if the gap analysis starts early.
- Treat the effectiveness-review evidence as the deliverable that replaces the old published reports — build the internal documentation trail a supervisor would expect to see on request.
- If you also report under MiFIR, EMIR or SFTR, coordinate this work with your transaction-reporting team, since execution-venue and counterparty data often feed both.
Related: ESMA ‘report once’ reform · Investment firm in Spain · MiFID investment firm in France
