With a year to go before his term is up, Charlie McCreevy, the European Union’s internal market commissioner, has waded into a fight he is convinced he can win. The credit ratings agencies are a soft target. Still, Monday’s call for a new, external oversight regime is more ambitious than anything seen before in Europe.

The pugnacious Irishman has swung and missed in the past. Last year, he dropped a long campaign to enforce a “one share, one vote” regime across the EU after a study – commissioned by his own office – found that deviations from that principle do no real harm. But he looks on safer ground here. By their own admission the agencies made wrong assumptions on subprime assets and on the specialist credit vehicles that bought them. The oft-cited defence, that credit ratings are mere opinions, will not wash, when politicians have spent years enshrining ratings in laws on capital reserves.