Capital Requirements Directives
Member States have progressively transposed, and firms of the financial service industry thus have had to apply, the CRD from 1 January 2007.The new CRD IV package entered into force on 17 July 2013: this updated CRD simply transposes into EU law the latest global standards on bank capital adequacy commonly known as Basel III, which builds on and expands the existing Basel II regulatory base.On 24 November 2010, the Council and the European Parliament officially adopted Directive 2010/76/EU on capital requirements for the trading book and for re-securitisations and the supervisory review of remuneration policies.The first, which affects the remuneration provisions, as well as a number of other ones dealing with the extension of some pre-existing minimum capital requirements, had to be implemented by 1 January 2011.In essence, they forced European banks, and, more importantly, the European Central Bank itself, to rely more than ever on the standardised assessments of "credit risk" marketed aggressively by two US credit rating agencies—Moody's and S&P—thus using public policy and ultimately taxpayers' money to strengthen anti-competitive duopolistic practices akin to exclusive dealing.