(40)The founding regulations provide that, in cooperation with the ESRB, the ESAs should initiate and coordinate Union-wide stress tests in order to assess the resilience of financial institutions or financial market participants to adverse market developments. It should also ensure that a consistent methodology is applied, to the extent possible, at national level to such tests. It should also be clarified, in respect of all of the ESAs, that the professional secrecy obligations of competent authorities should not prevent competent authorities from transmitting the results of stress tests to the ESAs for the purpose of publication.