European Single Access Point opens to the public

The European Single Access Point (ESAP) (external site) is one EU website and data service for information that companies and financial firms already publish under EU law. It gathers documents now held by many national bodies, free of charge, so that investors, analysts and students can search and compare them in one place (EUR-Lex summary (external site)).

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) runs the platform (ESMA (external site)).

Before ESAP, a reader looking for an annual financial report or a prospectus searched the register of each country's officially appointed mechanism (OAM) or national authority. The ESAP Regulation provides one web portal, an application programming interface (API) for machine access, a multilingual search function and a document viewer (EUR-Lex (external site)).

Machine translation follows by 10 July 2028. Access is free, with fees allowed only for specific services such as downloads of large volumes of information (EUR-Lex summary (external site)).

Filing does not move. Companies still file with their national collection body, which passes the information and its metadata, the descriptive fields that make a document searchable, on to ESAP (ESMA (external site)).

As an example, comparing the annual reports of ten listed companies in six countries takes one search instead of six national registers (ESMA (external site)).

Listed companies, asset managers, banks and investment firms publish information that ESAP collects; the sector acts amended by Regulation (EU) 2023/2869 set which disclosures enter and when (EUR-Lex (external site)).

For a Group Reporting Accountant, annual financial reports become searchable across the EU. An ESG Reporting Specialist sees sustainability disclosures enter ESAP in later phases (EUR-Lex (external site)).

A Fund Reporting Analyst follows which fund documents enter in each phase. A Data Governance Analyst checks that each document is in a data extractable format with metadata such as the entity name and the type of information (EUR-Lex (external site)).

An ESG Research Analyst gains one source and an API for comparing public disclosures across countries (EUR-Lex (external site)).

ESMA started collecting phase 1 data on 10 July 2026: disclosures under the Transparency Directive, the Prospectus Regulation and the Short Selling Regulation (ESMA (external site)).

The ESAP Regulation sets public access by 10 July 2027 and machine translation by 10 July 2028 (EUR-Lex (external site)).

Phase 2 information becomes accessible from 10 January 2028, including inside information under the Market Abuse Regulation and sustainability risk policies under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). Regulation (EU) 2023/2869 sets phase 3 from 10 January 2030 (EUR-Lex (external site)). ESMA's timeline lists a phase 2bis in January 2029 and starts phase 3 only if a Commission review confirms it (ESMA (external site)).

In September 2026 ESMA noted that the Commission's SFDR proposal already changes the ESAP timeline for SFDR documents. ESMA asked for a later ESAP date for the key information documents of packaged retail products and of the pan-European personal pension product; these are proposals (ESMA (external site)).

The ESAP package has three parts: Regulation (EU) 2023/2859, which creates ESAP, and Regulation (EU) 2023/2869 and Directive (EU) 2023/2864, which add ESAP filing duties to the sector rules (EUR-Lex (external site)).

The aim is that information already public becomes easier to find and use across borders. Member States designate the collection bodies, for some information by 9 January 2030 (EUR-Lex summary (external site)).