On 19 June 2012, the European Parliament loosened the project designed by the European Commission on credit rating agencies.

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The European Commission had designed a text aimed to control credit rating agencies, to make them more reliable, or even to reduce the power of influence. This may be due to the idea that they have had a role in the financial crisis, and more sovereign debts, a subjective role (conflict of interest) and mechanical role (concentration).

For this, based on the mechanism applicable to auditors, market actors which, because of their role as account certification, are similar to the Commission, to the rating agencies, auditors to which it devoted a green paper, the Commission had produced a draft that firms that use rating agencies should be changed every three years (rule of rotation).

The European procedure now giving Parliament an essential role, the draft text submitted to it. On 19 June 2012, after some debates which showed that the design of the Commission was "neither achievable nor effective", the Parliament adopted a much less restrictive version of the text for the rating agencies. Thus, the three years under the rule of rotation become 5 years and in a more general way the rotation obligation play if it’s structured credit. Parliament believes that it is in them that are located systemic risks and that should therefore not exceed beyond them the precaution of rotation.

By weakening the rotation mechanism, Parliament leaves less chance to new entrant on the market of the notation, then that many had argued that the concentration of it had played a negative role. But Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that the application of competition law would provide for and we were there in regulation. We measure once again how the distinction between competition and regulation is critical in practice. In addition, the rating agencies, because their change of notation was over-reaction on financial markets that do not support the States, the text organized a timetable on sovereign debt. Somehow, it "calms" them.

Thus, the rating agencies will be required to indicate in advance the two or three dates where, during the year, they are likely to change their rating of the sovereign debt of the European Union, except in exceptional circumstances. We here measure the power law: that to stop time, by the enactment of a schedule, which clocks the word of these rainmakers and sun. Moreover, Parliament retains the project originally conceived by the European Commission, not in the ex-ante devices than the ex-post devices. 

Indeed, Parliament has taken over the disposal of the project that an investor may be assigned on the basis of liability a credit rating agency (what the law already allowed to do), the applicant receiving a reversal of burden of proof, that is to say that the rating agency, defendant in the litigation, must demonstrate that it acted according to law (which is the inverse of the common law).

Thus, the regulatory system oscillates between an ex ante, because of the speed of time and constant changes, which looks more and more at the ex post, while it has more and more about the disciplinary effect ex post, here the civil liability arranged by an probationary relief against the rating agencies that it is disciplined by feedback ex ante.

The text adopted by Parliament following in this terms will be negotiated with the Member States, which certainly will obtain, as for integration in the European Union law standards of Basel III, significant changes, if only because the European states have divergent national interests. Institutionally, this will result in adoption of a common text co-decision with the European Council of Ministers. This text is expected by the end of the year.