1.At the request of the Authority, the competent authorities of the Member States shall provide the Authority with all the necessary information to carry out the duties assigned to it by this Regulation, provided that they have legal access to the relevant information and that the request for information is necessary in relation to the nature of the duty in question.
2.The Authority may also request information to be provided at recurring intervals and in specified formats. Such requests shall, where possible, be made using common reporting formats.
3.Upon a duly justified request from a competent authority of a Member State, the Authority may provide any information that is necessary to enable the competent authority to carry out its duties, in accordance with the professional secrecy obligations laid down in sectoral legislation and in Article 70.
4.Before requesting information in accordance with this Article and in order to avoid the duplication of reporting obligations, the Authority shall take account of any relevant existing statistics produced and disseminated by the European Statistical System and the European System of Central Banks.
5.Where information is not available or is not made available by the competent authorities in a timely fashion, the Authority may address a duly justified and reasoned request to other supervisory authorities, to the ministry responsible for finance where it has at its disposal prudential information, to the national central bank or to the statistical office of the Member State concerned.
6.Where information is not available or is not made available under paragraph 1 or 5 in a timely fashion, the Authority may address a duly justified and reasoned request directly to the relevant financial institutions. The reasoned request shall explain why the information concerning the respective individual financial institutions is necessary.
The Authority shall inform the relevant competent authorities of requests in accordance with this paragraph and with paragraph 5.
At the request of the Authority, the competent authorities shall assist the Authority in collecting the information.
7.The Authority may use confidential information received pursuant to this Article only for the purposes of carrying out the duties assigned to it by this Regulation.