The European Parliament and EU states begin negotiations on Tuesday on finalising reform of the bloc's securities rules, known as MiFID, aimed at making its capital market more efficient now that if faces competition from a post-Brexit London.
In initial positions, parliament has backed a tape that provides prices of completed share trades in real-time - currently many investors only get delayed prices - and an in-depth view of pre-trade prices on offer. Exchanges, which earn money from market data, say parliament is going beyond transparency to give investors a trading tool.
But the Association of Financial Markets in Europe , whose members include global banks and asset managers, said on Monday that an "ambitious real-time pre-trade" tape would help reverse the worrying trend of European stock markets being "markedly less dynamic" than their U.S. peers.