A group of financial industry associations have urged European stock exchanges to improve outage management with enhanced protocols, in light of trading disruptions which have impacted equity markets in recent months.
In a joint statement from the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), the European Funds and Management Association (EFAMA) and the FIA European Principal Traders Association (FIA EPTA), the group emphasises the need for stronger action on market outage protocols, “to help minimise disruption, provide critical and timely information to market participants.”
Specifically, the statement outlines four key principles to address these challenges, including implementing greater order status clarity, regular updates during an outage, communicating reopening times at least 15 minutes in advance, and giving 30 minutes’ notice on closing auctions.
Speaking to The TRADE, April Day, managing director, head of capital markets at AFME, said: ”Occasional outages are an inevitable part of modern trading, but their impact doesn’t have to be disruptive. By fully implementing clear, consistent, and transparent outage protocols, exchanges can minimise confusion and risk, protect investor confidence, and ensure that European markets remain competitive and resilient.”
The statement follows multiple disruptions occurring since the 2020, such as the most recent Nasdaq Nordic and Baltic outage in July 2025, and within the statement, the group indicates that recent incidents have shown gaps in protocol adherence, leading to confusion, increased risk and further disruption for investors and issuers.
Despite this, the associations also recognise that regulators and market participants have made progress in addressing these issues, such as with the ESMA Final Report on Market Outages, the FCA Policy Statement on Improving Equity Secondary Markets and the Plato Partnership Proposed Standards, which exchanges have aligned with their procedures.
During the Nasdaq Nordic and Baltic outage in July 2025, activity in OMX Stockholm 30 constituents fell by nearly 50%, while volumes also dropped from €2.3 billion to €1.6 billion during the outage.
Moreover, the share of trading through closing auctions for the broader OMX Nordic 40 decreased from 16% to 7% as a result.
Market outages have caused issues across the industry for some time. In February the European Central Bank (ECB) resolved an outage with its pan-European settlement system T2S from an incident with a hardware component, which caused commotion across the securities services industry.
In addition, several trading venues’ services, including The London Stock Exchange’s RNS service were also hit by global technology issues related to Microsoft in July 2024, while the exchange also experienced two outages on AIM stocks between October and December 2023.
Additionally, in January 2023 the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) encountered what appeared to be a floor–wide issue – with limit up/limit down (LULD) halts triggered in error – causing the opening auctions of an estimated 84 symbols to be cancelled.
This most recent joint statement by the associations is likely to spur further discussions across the market on the importance of improving outage-related issues across the industry and place increased pressure on market infrastructure institutions.