ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The credit rating of sovereign debts of euro area Member States is the credit rating of each of these countries by credit rating agencies. This is reflected in the allocation of notes to each country's public debt: a note on long-term debt and a note on short-term debt. These notes condition the borrowing capacity of States, as they are taken into account by investors and fund managers, who often have to comply with precise and strict rules on the quality of their bond investments, and to some extent determine the interest rates offered by investors on the bond market and indirectly influence the liquidity of the bond market for individual countries.

Here we are studying the evolution of long-term debt ratings; It is the one that is most significant and is generally taken up in the media. The most popular ratings are those attributed by the Big Three — Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings — which are global agencies with a global vocation. More recent agencies, specialized in certain markets or countries, are increasingly talking about them as they assign ratings deemed to be more stringent. Nevertheless, the other agencies seem to eventually converge their own notes towards them. The notes given by the Chinese agency Dagong Global Credit Rating and the American agency are therefore mentioned in addition when available. When awarding a rating, agencies generally specify the perspective attached to it. This perspective provides an indication of the future evolution of the note and will also be mentioned if available.

Following the economic crisis that began in 2008, notes on the debts of several euro area countries were degraded, leading to fears of default for some of them, especially when their debts are treated as debt (notes below Baa3 or BBB–).

Moreover, a 2006 study by Standard & Poor's on the effects of demographic ageing in advanced economies stated that.

Prerequisite on the use of colors in the article
In order to quickly visualize the rating categories between countries, the following colours are used in the tables:

The maps are used to visualize differences in notes between countries; they have specific colours, different from those used in the tables.

Current situation

Euro area countries
The table below summarizes the long-term sovereign rating and outlook of euro area countries at , according to the rating agencies Moody's, Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings, DBRS:

Legend:
Stable perspective •
Negative perspective •
SR Note under review •
– Perspective not communicated

On Friday, Greece was officially declared