27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Minor
Pare back prescriptive rules implementing the CFTC's core principles
Printed page 834 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies
“Reduce overly prescriptive rules implementing the CFTC’s core principles.”
What has happened
- Attempted
The Commission proposed to remove one of the most prescriptive of its core-principle rules: the requirement in 17 CFR part 37 that a swap execution facility offer an order book for "permitted transactions", the swaps not subject to the trade execution requirement of CEA section 2(h)(8). The comment period runs to 2026-09-25; nothing is final. Earlier in the window the Commission withdrew rather than reduced: it withdrew its October 2024 guidance to designated contract markets on listing voluntary carbon credit derivative contracts, under the part 38 core-principle framework, as of 2025-09-10, saying the guidance "provides limited value" and was "explicitly non-binding", and it withdrew two proposed rules that would have added prescription — the operational resilience framework on 2025-09-11 and the DCM and SEF governance and conflicts-of-interest proposal on 2025-09-18. Withdrawing non-binding guidance and abandoning proposals is not paring back a prescriptive rule, so the only step on this ask is the SEF proposal.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The proposal’s own summary, read at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-08-26/html/2026-17416.htm: the Commission “proposes to amend its regulations for swap execution facilities … to remove the requirement for SEFs to offer an order book for swap transactions that are not subject to trade execution requirement under section 2(h)(8) of the Commodity Exchange Act”.
- Why attempted and not partial. The proposal is not final, and no earlier CFTC-specific directive on core-principle rules exists, so the playbook’s rule for a proposed rule without a prior directive applies. The alternative reading — that the in-force withdrawals below already delivered a piece, making this partial — is recorded in the spot-check register.
- The withdrawals, and why they are notes rather than the Status. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/15/2025-17793/withdrawal-of-commission-guidance (read in full) withdraws the voluntary carbon credit derivatives guidance under part 38; the Commission says the guidance “is explicitly non-binding” and “does not create new compliance obligations or product listing standards for DCMs”, so nothing prescriptive was removed. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/11/2025-17555/operational-resilience-framework-for-futures-commission-merchants-swap-dealers-and-major-swap and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/18/2025-18070/requirements-for-designated-contract-markets-and-swap-execution-facilities-regarding-governance-and withdraw proposals, which prevents new prescription rather than reducing existing prescription.
- Also in the window, deregulatory but outside the core-principle parts: the part 20 large trader reporting sunset order of 2026-07-21, the March 2026 withdrawal of the climate-related financial risk request for information, and the June 2026 request for information on regulations affecting fintech firms (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/18/2026-12337/request-for-information-identifying-regulations-to-facilitate-innovation-and-competition-to-financial) — the last of which is the Commission asking the public which rules to cut, and is a lead rather than an action.
- The CFTC’s whole active 2026 Unified Agenda (18 RINs, reginfo.gov) has no general core-principles review entry.
- Action
- rescind
- Object
- CFTC rules implementing the agency’s core principles
- ID
- 2161