{"id":4057,"date":"2020-02-23T13:30:02","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T13:30:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-02-23T13:30:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T13:30:02","slug":"city-to-michel-barnier-thanks-for-the-hard-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=4057","title":{"rendered":"City to Michel Barnier: Thanks for the hard line"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"art\"><figcaption>\n<p>Barnier&#039;s hard line could be exactly the type of threat that the City needs to jolt the U.K. government into action | Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<header>\n<h1>City to Michel Barnier: Thanks for the hard line<\/h1>\n<p class=\"subhead\">City lobbyists hope that by ruling out financial services from a post-Brexit trade deal, the EU&#8217;s chief negotiator will jolt the UK government into action.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<footer class=\"meta\">\n<p>\n\t\t\tBy\t\t\t<span class=\"byline\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"vcard\">Cat Contiguglia<\/span>\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"timestamp\">12\/19\/17, 4:15 PM CET<\/p>\n<p class=\"updated\">Updated 12\/27\/17, 11:08 AM CET<\/p>\n<\/footer>\n<p>LONDON \u2014 At first reading, Michel Barnier\u2019s latest comments appear to be the City of London&#8217;s worst nightmare \u2014 nixing the possibility of financial services in a post-Brexit free-trade deal.<\/p>\n<p>But City figures reacting to an interview the EU chief negotiator gave to a consortium of European newspapers say that his hardline rhetoric may help their cause by forcing the government to come out fighting early for their cause.<\/p>\n<p>After Brexit, firms based in the U.K. will lose their \u201cpassporting\u201d abilities that allow authorized firms in the EU to sell services across the single market. To make up for that, the City has been lobbying hard for financial services to be included as a chapter in the final free-trade deal between the U.K. and the EU.<\/p>\n<p>But Barnier told the Guardian that financial services don\u2019t belong in trade deals. \u201cThere is no place [for financial services]. There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d He said the outcome was a consequence of \u201cthe red lines that the British have chosen themselves. In leaving the single market, they lose the financial services passport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the face of it, it sounds like game over.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt might be Christmas, but Michel Barnier doesn\u2019t need to play Scrooge. Just because financial services have not been encompassed in free-trade agreements to date is no reason to dismiss them from a future U.K.-EU free trade agreement,&#8221; said Miles Celic, CEO of TheCityUK.<\/p>\n<p>But for others, it&#8217;s exactly the type of threat that the City needs to jolt the U.K. government into action. They want an official U.K. position on financial services now, with the government ready to spend political capital defending it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe always thought this was a massive ask \u2026 we told the government there is no chance whatsoever of this happening unless the government asks for it \u2026 Barnier is totally right. This is not a normal part of an FTA,\u201d said one head of government relations at a bank in London. \u201cWhat we\u2019re saying to the U.K. government is: \u2018In your deliberations in the next few weeks after today\u2019s Cabinet, you really have to decide if you want financial services in a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Theresa May chaired a full Cabinet meeting Tuesday, after a meeting of her Brexit \u201cwar Cabinet\u201d on Monday. It is the first time since the referendum in June 2016 that the Cabinet has discussed what it actually wants from an eventual deal with the EU \u2014 that&#8217;s why the timing of Barnier&#8217;s intervention is so significant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe in the U.K. misunderstand how trade deals work. It\u2019s not a normal negotiation. You don\u2019t play things off in the normal way. You put your draft on the table and say \u2018that\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about\u2019 &#8230;\u00a0 It\u2019s not a question of poker, it\u2019s a question of who wins the power game,&#8221; said another government affairs head at a bank in London. &#8220;That said, the U.K. has to say in return \u2014 &#8216;No goods deal for you if no services deal for us,'&#8221; they added.<\/p>\n<p>The clock is ticking. The EU will formulate Barnier&#8217;s negotiating mandate for Phase 2 between now and March. If Phase 1 tells us anything, it is that once his marching orders are set, Barnier will not move an inch away from them. That means if they want Barnier to be in a position to even mention finance, the U.K. needs to insist it is a top priority on their side.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ve got to have their position now, and be pre-influencing the Commission\u2019s preparation of its guidelines. This is not months, this is weeks away. Really I\u2019m quite worried. Frankly if we don\u2019t get this into the mainstream and part of the expectations for further negotiation, I don\u2019t think we will achieve it,\u201d said the first government affairs head.<\/p>\n<p>If the City can achieve its aim of making Brussels at least talk about financial services, there may be wiggle room. \u201cIf his point is that even mutual access needs to incorporate the four freedoms, then that too is a matter for negotiation,\u201d said Rachel Kent, a partner at Hogan Lovells, a law firm that co-wrote one of the proposals for a financial services chapter in an FTA. \u201cAny arrangements would probably need to be proportionate to the access agreed and to take account of any red lines.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<footer class=\"content-credits\">\n<h6>Authors:<\/h6>\n<dl class=\"vcard\">\n<dt class=\"credits-author\"><span class=\"vcard\">Cat Contiguglia<\/span>&nbsp;<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/footer>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barnier&#039;s hard line could be exactly the type of threat that the City needs to jolt the U.K. government into action | Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images City to Michel Barnier: Thanks for the hard line City lobbyists hope that by ruling out financial services from a post-Brexit trade deal, the EU&#8217;s chief negotiator will jolt the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}