Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-446"
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"en.20100615.28.2-446"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, credit rating agencies were a matter of concern to this Parliament at the end of its previous term, and I should like to highlight in this regard the responsiveness of both the Commission and Parliament, which has adopted a regulation on credit rating agencies.
Today, we are raising this issue once again because of the observations that it has been possible to make about the role of credit rating agencies during the crisis. They can be criticised for not having seen the crisis coming, they can be criticised for the volatility of their ratings and for their untimely decisions in announcing their ratings, especially when they relate to sovereign debt.
Nevertheless, I believe that we must examine this issue with a clear head. Firstly, the fact that credit rating agencies rate products that they have submitted to investors is not, in itself, shocking. Investors who invest, who provide funds, are entitled to try to discover the risks or the difficulties that may arise, just as they are entitled to try to discover which ratings are good.
Where the situation becomes slightly more ambiguous is when these ratings are used, in banking regulations, to determine the amounts of own funds that banks must have in exchange for some of their investments. From this point of view, the 2009 regulation does not really provide a solution since the idea was to provide for both the approval and the supervision of credit rating agencies. Therefore, a rating may be legitimate, but is it legitimate to issue ratings as the agencies do?
I believe that the texts that you will propose – I would emphasise, Commissioner, that you have just submitted the text on the introduction of European supervision of credit rating agencies within the framework of the new financial regulation – must enable a solution to be found to these issues, especially that of competition in the field of credit rating agencies. From my perspective, I do not think that simply confirming the creation of a European agency, even if it is public, solves the problems. If the idea is to have an agency that issues ratings in a kinder, more generous fashion than the others, it will not be of much use.
More questions need to be asked, in my opinion, about the conditions in which the agencies issue their ratings. There are ratings of private enterprises, and there are ratings of sovereign debt. I shall emphasise the ratings of sovereign debt. The authority which, at Parliament’s request, will be responsible for monitoring and supervising those agencies that will operate in Europe is ESMA, the new financial services authority. I also think that the powers conferred on ESMA should include the possibility not only to supervise the agencies effectively, but also, as regards sovereign debt, to provide for a facility by which to monitor, though not censure, the way in which credit rating agencies issue sovereign debt ratings.
We cannot allow a situation – and such situations have indeed arisen – in which, 15 minutes before the markets close, an agency downgrades a country, thus giving rise to completely undesirable consequences. In fact, what needs to be done is to implement a preventive system that will force credit rating agencies to inform the supervisor, within a very short timescale, if need be, of the conditions in which they envisage issuing ratings so that the supervisor can verify both that the standard procedures have been followed and, above all, that the conditions in which the ratings are issued will not adversely affect the situation as regards, in particular, sovereign debt. The debt of businesses is not the same as that of states; it deserves to be treated differently. That being said, some people have mentioned the Court of Auditors, but such courts do not exist in every European country, and they are not all independent.
That, Mr President, Commissioner, is the thrust of our questions. How can we improve the operating methods of credit rating agencies and, above all, the dissemination of information, and how can we improve competition?"@en1
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