Recital 44

(44)In view of the specificities of sovereign ratings and in order to avoid a risk of contagion across the Union, statements announcing a revision of a given group of countries should be prohibited if not accompanied by individual country reports. Furthermore with the view to enhancing the validity and accessibility of sources of information used by credit rating agencies in public communications on potential changes in sovereign ratings, other than credit ratings, rating outlooks and accompanying press releases, such communications should always be based on information within the sphere of the rated entity which has been disclosed with the consent of the rated entity unless that information is available from generally accessible sources. Where the legal framework governing the rated entity provides that the rated entity must not disclose such information, such as in the case of inside information as defined in point (1) of Article 1 of Directive 2003/6/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 28 January 2003 on insider dealing and market manipulation (market abuse) ¹³ , the rated entity must not give its consent.