Europe and the UK have yet to negotiate a financing agreement that would allow for something like the status quo before Brexit.
Photographer: Hollie Adams / Bloomberg
Photographer: Hollie Adams / Bloomberg
The European Union is unlikely to grant the UK equivalence in financial services as the two ‘most likely scenarios’ diverge in the coming years, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. adviser Jose Manuel Barroso said.
“I personally believe there will be no permanent equivalence decision on the European Union side regarding financial services,” Barroso told a Moody’s Investor Services webinar on Thursday. “It’s more or less inevitable, irreversible, a trend of progressive divergence,” he said.
Barroso’s comments, who led the European Commission for a decade until 2014, underscore the hard line the EU has taken so far. Europe and the UK have yet to negotiate a financing agreement that would allow for something like the status quo before Brexit. The talks due to end in March are about a way forward for cooperation, and have mostly symbolic relevance, while a decision on equality is unlikely to be taken any time soon.
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“It is clear” that the EU wants more companies to shift from London to the eurozone as a result of Brexit, Barroso added. The bloc wants the “dislocation” of capital, people and “risk management from the UK to the euro area and to the European Union in general,” he said.