AIFMD II: Political agreement is out!

The EU Commission, the Parliament and the Council reached an agreement on AIFMD II in July this year and since then the asset management industry has been waiting for the final text. Following additional discussions between these authorities, the political agreement is now final and available on the Council website.

Although the new directive ("AIFMD II") focuses on AIFMD, it also modifies UCITS by aligning certain requirements and making the regulatory approach more consistent between the two regimes.

The main topics covered by AIFMD II are the following: delegation regime, availability and use of liquidity management tools, supervisory reporting requirements, white-labelling (or use of third-party AIFMs/management companies), information on costs charged to investors, alignment of the list of permitted functions/services that an AIFM/management company can perform.

With regard to AIFMD in particular, the following innovations have been introduced: provisions on the activity of loan origination and the possibility for a Member State to authorise the appointment of a depositary in a Member State other than the home Member State of the AIF managed by that AIFM (subject to conditions).

As regards the next steps, the political agreement will be adopted in the coming weeks/months by the EU Parliament in a plenary meeting and, shortly after that, the Council will formally approve the newly voted text. However, no change in the substance of the text is expected between now and then. After this approval, the text will be translated into the official languages of the Union and published in the Official Journal of the EU.

AIFMD II must be implemented by EU Member States within 2 years from its entry into force and will become applicable from that date (which is expected to be in the course of Q1 2026), subject to specific transition provisions for existing loan originating AIFs and for the new reporting requirements.

In order to help you to identify the changes introduced by AIFMD II in both the AIFM and the UCITS Directives, we suggest that you use the consolidated version of these Directives. In these consolidated versions, the amendments included in the political agreement are highlighted (in red and blue) and the AIFMD II Recitals have been inserted each time under the relevant article.

• To access the consolidated version of the AIFM Directive with AIFMD II, click here
• To access the consolidated version of the UCITS Directive with AIFMD II, click here