Guide
What is ESAP? The European Single Access Point explained
The European Single Access Point (ESAP) is an EU-wide portal, built and operated by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), that will give free, centralised electronic access to the information companies and financial-market participants already publish under EU financial-services, capital-markets and sustainability rules. It opens to the public on 10 July 2027.
ESAP in one paragraph
Today, a listed company's annual report, prospectus, major-holdings notifications and dozens of other documents are published in national repositories — one per country, each with its own portal, format and search. ESAP collects the same information from those national bodies and makes it searchable in one place, in a data-extractable or machine-readable format, through a web portal and an application programming interface (API). It is often compared with EDGAR, the US Securities and Exchange Commission's filing system that has existed since the 1990s.
What ESAP is — and what it is not
| ESAP is | ESAP is not |
|---|---|
| A single EU entry point to information that is already public under EU law. | A new disclosure obligation. The regulation does not require any company to publish anything it does not have to publish today. |
| Operated by ESMA, fed by national "collection bodies" (mostly existing repositories and supervisors). | A place where companies upload documents directly. Entities submit to their collection body, which forwards the information to ESAP. |
| Free of charge for users, with search, download, API access and — from 10 July 2028 — machine translation and notifications. | A ranking, rating or recommendation service. ESAP presents information; it does not evaluate companies. |
| Open, from 10 January 2030, to voluntary submissions by any entity governed by the law of a Member State. | A guarantee of investor attention. Voluntary information is shown separately and flagged as such. |
Legal basis
ESAP is established by Regulation (EU) 2023/2859 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023, published in the Official Journal on 20 December 2023 and in force since 9 January 2024. Two accompanying acts — an "omnibus" directive and an "omnibus" regulation — amended the sectoral EU laws so that information disclosed under them is routed to ESAP. In July 2025 the European Commission adopted two implementing regulations drafted by the three European Supervisory Authorities: Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1338 on certain functionalities of ESAP and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1339 on the tasks of collection bodies.
How information gets into ESAP: the two-tier model
- The entity submits to a collection body. A listed company keeps filing its annual report, prospectus or notification with the body it already uses — typically the national officially appointed mechanism (OAM) for regulated information, the national competent authority, or in some cases ESMA or another EU body. Collection bodies must be designated by each Member State and notified to ESMA.
- The collection body forwards it to ESAP. The collection body checks that the submission is complete, in the required format, accompanied by the required metadata (including the legal entity identifier, LEI), carries a qualified electronic seal where required, and is free of malware. It then makes the information available to ESAP automatically, through a single API.
- ESAP makes it accessible. ESMA's portal indexes the information and exposes it through search and the API. Historical information covers documents made public up to five years before the relevant start date, where the sectoral act so provides.
What this means for a company: ESAP changes how your filings are read, not how they are made. The extra work in the first phase is mostly the metadata your collection body asks for at submission. Responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the information stays with the submitting entity — including when the technical preparation of a file, such as iXBRL tagging, is outsourced.
What information ESAP will contain
The regulation lists around 35 EU legal acts (regulations and directives) whose public disclosures will be routed to ESAP, in three phases. The first phase covers information under the Transparency Directive (annual and half-yearly financial reports in the European Single Electronic Format, major-holdings notifications and other regulated information), the Prospectus Regulation and the Short Selling Regulation. Later phases add information under, among others, market-abuse, fund, benchmark, sustainability and company-law rules.
| Phase | Collection bodies start feeding ESAP | Content (summary) |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | 10 July 2026 | Transparency Directive (ESEF annual reports and other regulated information), Prospectus Regulation, Short Selling Regulation |
| Phase 2 | 10 January 2028 | A second group of EU acts (market abuse, investment funds and others) |
| Phase 3 | 10 January 2030 | Remaining acts; voluntary submissions by any EU entity become possible |
The Commission must report on ESAP by 10 January 2029 and may, by delegated act, postpone by up to 36 months the inclusion of information not yet covered where it finds severe and pervasive difficulties. Dates for individual acts may therefore still move; the phase-1 dates have passed and apply.
Who must submit, and who may
- Must (mandatory): any entity that already has a disclosure obligation under one of the listed EU acts — issuers with securities on a regulated market, prospectus issuers, fund managers, benchmark administrators and others. For them, ESAP is routing, not a new duty.
- May (voluntary, from 10 January 2030): any entity governed by the law of a Member State, including unlisted small and medium-sized companies, for information about its economic activities relevant to financial services, capital markets or sustainability. The submission goes through the collection body of the Member State where the entity has its registered office, must carry an LEI and metadata flagging it as voluntary, and must be in a data-extractable format. What is known about voluntary submissions →
What users will be able to do
- Search by entity name, LEI, type of information, date, size of the entity, country of registered office, industry sector and collection body.
- View and download information in a user-friendly interface, and extract data in machine-readable formats where the sectoral act requires them (for example, iXBRL for annual financial reports).
- Use the API to retrieve information programmatically and in bulk — the channel analysts, data vendors and screening tools are expected to rely on.
- Translate and subscribe: machine translation of documents and a notification service for new information are required by 10 July 2028.
- Pay nothing in the standard case. The regulation allows fees only for specific services involving very large download volumes or very frequent access.
Why ESAP matters even though it adds no obligations
Three things change in practice:
- Visibility of errors. A validation warning in an ESEF file that today sits unnoticed in one national repository becomes visible in one EU-wide, machine-readable dataset. Legal commentators have noted that the immediate accessibility of errors to investors' algorithms increases, rather than decreases, the risk attached to inaccurate data.
- Comparability. Because ESAP exposes data in structured formats and lets users filter by sector, size and country, a company's figures will be compared with peers across the EU automatically — including companies that no analyst currently covers.
- A door for unlisted companies. From 2030, voluntary submissions give companies without a listing a way to present data in the same format investors use for listed peers. How many will use it, and whether investors will look, is an open question — see our guide to investor visibility with ESAP.
Frequently asked questions
Does ESAP replace my national repository (OAM)?
No. You keep submitting to your collection body. ESAP is fed by it. The portal adds an EU-wide layer on top; it does not remove the national one.
Will I have to re-tag or re-file old reports?
The regulation does not require re-filing. Historical information is included only where a sectoral act provides for it, and only for documents made public within the five years before the relevant date.
Is ESAP the same as ESEF?
No. ESEF is the format (XHTML with iXBRL tagging) in which listed companies in the EU publish their annual financial reports. ESAP is the access point that will make those reports, and many other documents, searchable in one place. ESEF files are among the first content ESAP receives.
Who is behind esap.pro?
esap.pro is an independent information service operated by Ethicalc sp. z o.o., a data-systems company in Gdańsk, Poland. It is not affiliated with ESMA or any EU institution. About us →
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2023/2859 establishing a European single access point — EUR-Lex (Art. 1 operation date; Art. 3 voluntary submissions; Art. 5 collection bodies; Art. 7 functionalities; Art. 13 review).
- Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1339 on certain tasks of collection bodies, and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1338 on certain functionalities of ESAP — Official Journal, July 2025.
- ESMA — European Single Access Point (official project page).
- Pérez-Llorca, Legal briefing on Regulation (EU) 2023/2859 (January 2024) — scope of 19 regulations and 16 directives; voluntary submissions; fees.
- Accountancy Europe — ESAP: what do auditors need to know — the two-tier submission model.
- Paperjam — ESAP: LuxSE and the CSSF steer financial centralisation — on issuer responsibility and the visibility of errors (citing Clifford Chance).
This guide summarises public legal texts for information purposes. It is not legal advice; for a decision that depends on the exact wording, read the regulation or ask a lawyer. We date every update at the top of the page.