Recital 39

(39) Financial intermediaries should strive to achieve the best possible price and the highest possible likelihood of execution for trades that they execute on behalf of their clients. To that end, financial intermediaries should select the trading venue or counterparty for executing their clients’ trades solely on the basis of achieving best execution for their clients. It should be incompatible with the principle of best execution that a financial intermediary, when acting on behalf of its retail clients or clients that have opted in to the professional client regime as referred to in Directive 2014/65/EU, receives a fee, a commission or a non-monetary benefit from any third party for executing orders from those clients on a particular execution venue or for forwarding orders of those clients to any third party for their execution on a particular execution venue. Investment firms should therefore be prohibited from receiving such payment. This prohibition is necessary in light of the divergent practices by competent authorities across the Union in their application and supervision of the best-execution requirement as laid down in Article 27 of Directive 2014/65/EU. It should be possible for a Member State in which investment firms carried out such an activity before 28 March 2024 to exempt investment firms under its jurisdiction from that prohibition until 30 June 2026, where those investment firms provide such services to clients domiciled or established in that Member State.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-13 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.