- Date&Time
Monday, 10 July 2017 / 16:30 – 18:00 - Venue
Conference Room 1, Level 10, Building 3, Waseda Campus - Venue
Dr. John-Paul Salter（Visiting Lecturer in Public Policy, King’s College London） - MC
Prof. Hidetoshi Nakamura (Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University; Head of European Research Unit, Waseda ORIS; Director of Waseda Institute for British Studies) - Language
English
Overview
EU-Japan Friendship Week Symposium is an event that the Waseda Institute of Political Economy has been organizing every year since 2001. This year, we have invited Dr. John-Paul Salter, who has been working for a large-scale research project based in King’s College London, “The UK in a Changing Europe”. In the first part of this symposium on the 6th July, titled “The new UK-EU relations: The Brexit negotiations after the General Election of 8 June”, he talked about Brexit in general. In part 2, Dr. Salter, who specializes in Regulatory Politics and has a working experience in baking in the City, spoked on a more specific issue, British financial regulation after Brexit.
In Dr. Salter’s second talk, “Governance and politics in the UK after Brexit: The future of British financial regulation”, he firstly explained about the background of the British financial market. Then, he analysed European financial regulation, passporting and equivalence. Finally, several possible outcomes based on those analysis were proposed. Firstly, for the context, the importance of the City of London to the UK economy was explained, mentioning its size of employment, its contribution to the British GDP and the fact of being the biggest taxpaying sector in the UK. In addition, the City of London is also important in the EU because of the number of euro-denominated OTC derivatives routed through London and the amount of euro-denominated assets of UK-based banks.
Regarding the European financial regulation, it was mentioned that the EU’s legislative framework contains an enormous suite of regulations and directives, and it specifies the regulatory standards. The regulatory cooperation has been intitutionalised and regulatory equivalence has been solidified into the ‘financial services passport’. ‘The passporting regime’ is a legal framework which enables firms based in one member state to be operated in other member states without any authorisation. After Brexit, it is likely that passporting will be lost and branches of UK-based banks operating on the mainland will become ‘third-country’ for regulatory purposes, resulting in draining of firms from the UK. However, at the same time, it is also possible that the UK will stay in the passporting regime because European regulators are nervous about half-hearted relocations and there are not many cities as attractive as London. The alternative option to passporting regime is ‘the equivalence regime’. It is conceivable that this regime will allow European and global firms to be operated as before. However, this unprecedented regime is very complicated and contingent, and furthermore, it is incomplete, this regime might not be a valid option. In conclusion, it was pointed out that there is a range of possibilities, from ‘bleak future without passporting’ to ‘better future with equivalence plus’.
After the talk, many questions and comments on various arguments were given by the audience, such as the views of British government, the reaction of France and Germany, and the impact of the Japan-EU EPA which had reached a political agreement in principle on the day of the symposium. Through the interaction, Dr. Salter stated that it is most likely that Britain will appeal to the EU to complete the equivalence and ‘equivalence plus regime’ will be applied. This symposium focused on financial regulation and a much deeper discussion was carried out.
