The MADES initiative specifies a standard for a communication platform which every Transmission System Operator (TSO) in Europe may use to reliably and securely exchange documents. Consequently a European market participant (trader, distribution utilities, etc.) could benefit from a single, common, harmonized and secure platform for message exchange with the different TSOs; thus reducing the cost of building different IT platforms to interface with all the parties involved. This also represents an important step in facilitating parties entering into markets other than their national ones. The ―MADES‖ acronym is short for: MArket Data Exchange Standard. The MADES initiative has been adopted by the ENTSO-E Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Working Group (WG) to facilitate communication between TSOs and European electricity market participants.