Today the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) adopted a report on the future perspectives of credit rating agencies (CRAs). The own initiative report runs parallel to a Commission consultation on the future regulation of CRAs that is the basis for a new regulatory proposal expected for autumn this year. CRAs came to the spotlight during the financial crisis and again during the public debt crisis in the Euro zone Member States.

"More transparency, accountability and less reliance on external credit ratings as well as increasing competition in the sector are key in setting new rules for CRAs" said ALDE rapporteur Wolf Klinz (FDP, Germany) "CRAs cannot simply state that their ratings are mere expressions of opinions, but they have to assume responsibility for their judgments. Furthermore, the 'blind' over-reliance by market players on ratings has led to dependency on credit ratings in financial markets and little to no own risk assessment from financial actors. We need to restore investors' ability and willingness to conduct their own due diligence and risk assessment. "

Moreover, in order to tackle the current quasi-oligopolistic industry structure in the market Mr Klinz asked the European Commission "to conduct a detailed impact assessment on the establishment of an independent and autonomous European Credit Rating Foundation to foster competition."