Financial supervision of credit rating agencies: "At last, the ESMA will be able to do its job!" - Jean-Paul Gauzès MEP
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"After more than one year of delay, the main rating agencies, Fitch, Moody's, Standard & Poor's and DBRS have finally been registered by the competent financial regulatory authorities, which paves the way for actual supervision by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA)" said Jean-Paul Gauzès MEP, EPP Group spokesperson on Economic and ;Monetary affairs, on Thursday 10 November.
"It took far too long to register these main pan- European agencies" Jean-Paul Gauzès MEP regretted. "Now that it is done, registration will, at last, make it possible to implement concretely the tools for supervision that the European Parliament has been demanding" he added.
"We fought for the strengthening of European supervision of credit rating agencies. The debt crisis which some of European countries are going through and the excessive power that ratings are given on the markets reminds us everyday of the necessity of effective supervision at European level" Jean-Paul Gauzès added.
"The European Securities and Markets Authority must now proceed quickly to a first inspection. It must also provide itself, in the long run, with the appropriate means to maintain an efficient and high quality supervision of this activity which has a strong impact in times of crisis" Jean-Paul Gauzès concluded.
In a letter to the President of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), Jean-Paul Gauzès had written in May: "It would be very difficult for our citizens to understand why, nearly two years after the first Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies was adopted, these Agencies are still not supervised at European level and, what is more, the transfer of the supervisory competence to ESMA has not been done within the time decided by the European legislator."
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Further information:
Jean-Paul GAUZÈS MEP, Tel: +32-2-284-7700
Marion Jeanne, EPP Group Press & Communications service, Tel: +32-479-84-02-93