(5)A registration fee should be charged to credit rating agencies established in the Union to reflect ESMA’s costs for processing the application for registration. The complexity of an application and costs associated to assessing the application increase where a credit rating agency applies for issuing ratings for structured finance instruments or plans to endorse ratings from third country agencies or has branches. Therefore the registration fee should be calculated according to those factors. The processing costs also depend to a large extent on the size of the applicant credit rating agency. As the future turnover of a new credit rating agency would not be known at the moment of its application for registration, the number of employees should replace turnover as a common basis for calculation of all credit rating agencies.