(3)In order for a third country legal regime to be considered equivalent to the legal regime of the Union in respect of operational risk mitigation techniques and margins requirements, the substantive outcome of the applicable legal, supervisory and enforcement arrangements should be equivalent to Union requirements in respect of the regulatory objectives they achieve. The purpose of this equivalence assessment is therefore to verify that the legal, supervisory and enforcement arrangements of the United States of America (USA) ensure that OTC derivative contracts not cleared by a CCP and entered into by at least one counterparty established in that third country do not expose financial markets in the Union to a higher level of risk than those markets could be exposed to by that type of derivative contracts entered into by counterparties established in the Union and, consequently, do not pose unacceptable levels of systemic risk in the Union.