Only companies can become Exchange member of EPEX Spot. Once they are Exchange Member, a company must then designate individual persons who will be in turn admitted as Exchange Traders.

There is a single admission process for all market segments of EPEX Spot based on the principle of one-stop-shopping. Candidate Exchange Members have therefore just a unique contact at EPEX Spot Admission Department to help them with the admission process.

Type of Membership:

There are four types of Exchange Members on EPEX Spot:

• Trading Member;
• Trading Member with Special Task;
• Designated Broker; and
• Implicit Participant.
  

Exchange Participants:

Trading members are the companies admitted for trading on EPEX Spot. They can trade for their own account or for third-parties account.

Trading Members can chose to trade via a Designated Broker. In this case, trading is exclusively performed via the Designated Broker and the Trading Member has no technical access to the exchange auction system.

Designated Brokers:

A Designated Broker can trade on the exchange on behalf of other Trading Members that have chosen specifically to trade through them.

Trading Members with special task and Implicit Participants are active on EPEX Spot for market coupling purposes.

Admission requirements:

General admission requirements

Exchange Members must sign the Trading Agreement whereby they commit to comply with the Market Rules, the Code of Conduct and the Operational Rules of EPEX Spot.

They must also provide EPEX Spot SE with the following documents:

• Identification form (contacts,…),
• Letter of capacity to buy and sell electricity according to the country of incorporation of the member,
• Authorised signatures form,
• Authorised traders form,
• Supporting documents: extract of Chamber of Commerce (includes power of attorney), specimen of signature of authorised persons (ID card copies), last annual report, the current articles of association.
  
• Technical forms for French Hub,
• Technical forms for German/Austrian/Swiss hubs,
• Declaration to the French Ministry of Industry for French hub,
• Know Your Customer form.

Requirements for the clearing, settlement and delivery of transactions

Clearing and settlement

Exchange Members must ensure that the clearing of their transactions is properly carried out by ECC AG. They must be approved as a Trading Participant by ECC and participate in clearing with ECC as Non-Clearing Member (or in some cases as a Clearing Member).

Transactions taking place on all market segments of EPEX Spot are settled via Clearing Members which are financially responsible for all transactions conducted by their Non-Clearing Member. Clearing Members are financial institutions that have put in place the infrastructure that is necessary to exchange payments with ECC via the Target 2 settlement system managed by the Central banks of the euro-zone.

Non-Clearing Members must sign a Non-Clearing Member agreement with a Clearing Member and with ECC.