EU Investment Regulation

EU investment regulation covering MiFID II and MiFIR, their historical predecessors, market-abuse controls, and alternative-fund manager rules.

EU investment regulation includes interconnected rules for investment-firm authorization, client conduct, trading venues, market transparency, transaction reporting, market abuse, and alternative investment fund managers. The governing rule depends on the entity, service, instrument, client, jurisdiction, and date; “EU regulated” is not a complete compliance conclusion.

Start with MiFID and MiFID II for the current investment-services framework and its relationship with MiFIR. Use the Investment Services Directive only for historical analysis before MiFID replaced it.

Core Rule Families

Rule familyPrimary question
MiFID and MiFID IIHow are investment services, client protections, trading venues, transparency, reporting, and passporting regulated?
Investment Services DirectiveWhat authorization and mutual-recognition framework applied before MiFID I?
Market Abuse RegulationDo insider dealing, unlawful disclosure, manipulation, issuer disclosure, or market-sounding rules apply?
Alternative Investment Fund Managers DirectiveDoes an alternative-fund manager face authorization, risk, disclosure, depositary, or marketing requirements?

How to Analyze an EU Rule

  1. Identify the legal entity and its home, host, or third-country status.
  2. Identify the service, activity, product, instrument, trading venue, and client category.
  3. Separate directives, regulations, national implementation, delegated acts, and supervisory guidance.
  4. Confirm the version, application date, transitional provisions, and any exemption.
  5. Match the conclusion to evidence such as an authorization register, client file, order record, transaction report, disclosure, policy, or regulator filing.

Common mistakes include treating directives and regulations as interchangeable, assuming passporting is a blanket license, applying current rules to a historical event without checking dates, or inferring investment safety from regulatory status. These pages provide general education, not legal, compliance, licensing, tax, accounting, or investment advice.

In this section

Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.

AIFMD

EU framework governing managers of alternative investment funds, including authorization, risk, liquidity, disclosure, depositary, and marketing duties.

Investment Services Directive

The 1993 Investment Services Directive created an early EU authorization and passporting framework for investment firms before MiFID replaced it.

MiFID / MiFID II

MiFID II is the EU directive governing investment firms and regulated markets alongside MiFIR rules for transparency and transaction reporting.

Browse Regulation