Brussels takes over EU-UK regulatory forum after Northern Ireland deal

By Huw Jones

March 8 (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Wednesday it would finalize the launch of a long-delayed discussion forum for EU and UK financial regulators once the deal with Northern Ireland is finalized. North will have been finalized by London.

The forum, similar to the one the EU already has with the US, was due to be set up in March 2021 but was frozen due to disagreements over trade relations with Northern Ireland.

Those disagreements were ironed out in last month’s agreement, or Windsor Framework, which has yet to be formally implemented by Britain.

“We are ready to start working on finalizing the memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the regulation of financial services,” a spokesperson for the European Commission’s financial services unit said on Wednesday.

“Once the Windsor framework is applied, this MoU would enable a relationship similar to that which exists with other third countries with a significant financial services sector,” the spokesperson said.

Brexit has left London’s financial district – known as ‘the City’ – largely isolated from the EU, forcing banks, insurers and asset managers to set up hubs in the bloc to avoid any interruption of their services.

Around 7,000 finance sector jobs have moved from the UK to the Continent to fill the new centres, and Amsterdam has overtaken London as Europe’s biggest stock trading centre.

The forum is not mandated to decide access to EU financial markets, but financial sector officials say it could improve the sector’s strained relations across the Channel and help ease tensions in areas such as derivatives clearing.

David Schwimmer, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, said last week that improving relations between the EU and the UK were “positive” in preventing market fragmentation.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Tomasz Janowski; editing in Spanish by Tomás Cobos)