The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published the following documents as required under the Regulation on credit rating agencies (CRA Regulation).

• Technical advice on competition, choice and conflicts of interest in the CRA industry. ESMA notes that the CRA Regulation has improved the governance and operation of CRAs but that it is too soon to comprehensively assess the impact of measures regarding competition and conflicts of interest;
• Technical advice on reducing sole and mechanistic reliance on credit ratings. ESMA notes that as it may not be practical to remove all of references to credit ratings in national and EU legislation, future action should focus on mitigating mechanistic reliance on credit ratings rather than removing them from legislation entirely; and
• Report on the possibility of establishing one or more mappings of credit ratings published on the European Rating Platform (ERP). ESMA’s notes that rather than establishing one or more mappings of credit ratings published on the ERP, it should instead focus on improving the information, data and tools available to users of the ERP so that they can carry out their own assessments.

View ESMA sees progress in reform of EU credit rating industry, 2 October 2015