(12)The credit rating market shows that, traditionally, credit rating agencies and rated entities enter into long-lasting relationships. This raises the risk of familiarity, as the credit rating agency may become too sympathetic to the desires of the rated entity. In those circumstances, the impartiality of credit rating agencies could, over time, become questionable. Indeed, credit rating agencies appointed and paid by a corporate issuer have an incentive to issue overly favourable ratings on that rated entity or on its debt instruments in order to maintain the business relationship with such issuer. Issuers are also subject to incentives that favour long-lasting relationships, such as the lock-in effect whereby an issuer refrains from changing credit rating agency as this could raise concerns of investors regarding the issuer’s creditworthiness. This problem was already identified in Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009, which required credit rating agencies to apply a rotation mechanism providing for gradual changes in analytical teams and credit rating committees so that the independence of the rating analysts and persons approving credit ratings would not be compromised. The success of those rules, however, was highly dependent on a behavioural solution internal to the credit rating agency, namely the actual independence and professionalism of the employees of the credit rating agency vis-à-vis the commercial interests of the credit rating agency itself. Those rules were not designed to provide a sufficient guarantee towards third parties that the conflicts of interest arising from the long-lasting relationship would effectively be mitigated or avoided. A way to achieve this could be by limiting the period during which a credit rating agency can continuously provide credit ratings on the same issuer or its debt instruments. Setting out a maximum duration of the contractual relationship between the issuer which is rated or which issued the rated debt instruments and the credit rating agency should remove the incentive for issuing favourable credit ratings with respect to that issuer. Additionally, requiring the rotation of credit rating agencies as a normal and regular market practice should also effectively mitigate the problem of the lock-in effect. Finally, the rotation of credit rating agencies should have positive effects on the credit rating market, as it would facilitate new market entries and offer existing credit rating agencies the opportunity to extend their business to new areas.