5 ms·

Because the only reason anyone is talking about moving staff to inside the EU at all is because the EU can't attract them itself, so has to force those people t

Because the only reason anyone is talking about moving staff to inside the EU at all is because the EU can't attract them itself, so has to force those people to move through law. It's a failing strategy, long term. Can the EU "attract" employers by making it illegal for them to sell without physically being there? Sure, but that's kind of the opposite of trade.

pyrale 10y ago
Can you name many countries giving the equivalent of passporting rights to foreigners ? Outside of Europe, I see no one.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  It's the opposite actually. The specific activity that tends to be talked about here is Euro clearing. London clears transactions in currencies from all over the world, including US Dollar and Renminbi transactions. Nobody cares about this because it's just not a big deal. Except the EU, which has some weird hangup about having euro clearing be physically done in the eurozone. Note that the EU has already tried to force this business out of the UK even before Brexit. The UK Government took the Commission to court and pointed out that their new regulations blatantly violated the EU's own commitments around discrimination, and won. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-wins-court-case-with-ecb-on-euro-clearing-1425462219 http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-wins-court-case-with-ecb-on-... The EU is no friend of the UK, or bankers. They see finance workers as resources to be fought over and pumped for tax revenue, nothing more.
notahacker 10y ago
Passporting regulations are an innovation which made it easier for EU countries to do business with other [EU/EEA] countries, not harder. Ultimately, if a branch of a company isn't in a jurisdiction which follows EU/US/Japanese law it can't expect to represent itself as a EU/US/Japanese branch and expect to do the same paperwork as an EU/US/Japanese branch. The innovation with passporting was entirely around assuming that your French or Estonian branch didn't need to do special Italian paperwork or set up an Italian subsidiary because they all sat under the same jurisdiction following the same regulations anyway. If you insist companies based on your territory should be free to not comply with EU regulations, you can't expect that same rule to continue applying
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  That is totally wrong. In fact the MiFiD II EU financial regulations that are coming into force in 2018 say that any country can essentially be passported into the block as long as they have an "equivalent" regulatory regime. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/theres-a-little-known-eu-rule-that-may-stop-the-brexit-banking-exodus.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/theres-a-little-known-eu-rule... So your statement that such companies "can't expect" is wrong - in fact they can expect that, because the EU already committed to it. This is posing a big problem for the EU right now because obviously on the day of exit the UK would still have an "equivalent" regime, so there'd be no grounds to force bankers to relocate. The details of MiFiD II were handled by technocrats whose brief was just to make trade easier, so such rules make sense: if the two regimes are close enough, why insist on EU membership? Nobody realistically expects the EU to stick to their own rules though. The EU never lets written law trump political demands. Just look at the Euro bailouts if you doubt that.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    The word "equivalent" is doing a lot of work when a country has left a bloc with the specific stated reason that it wishes to be able to implement legislative change without respecting EU guidelines or authorities. MiFiD II doesn't apply to retail customers and "third country" passporting isn't automatic and can be withdrawn at short notice, so even if Liam Fox stops believing that free trade is the result of government inaction for long enough to ensure appropriate reciprocal arrangements are actually made, some business units are still going to see relocation as a more attractive alternative.
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      Retail banking isn't what is being talked about in these articles, euro clearing is (primarily).
simonh 10y ago
If your financial records and contracts are subject to a legal domain it's reasonable to require that they are present in that legal domain so that the law and legal requirements such as auditing and regulatory scrutiny can be enforced. This isn't some special new rule made up by the EU, the US and plenty of other countries have similar rules.

pyrale 10y ago

Can you name many countries giving the equivalent of passporting rights to foreigners ? Outside of Europe, I see no one.

zigzigzag 10y ago
It's the opposite actually. The specific activity that tends to be talked about here is Euro clearing. London clears transactions in currencies from all over the world, including US Dollar and Renminbi transactions. Nobody cares about this because it's just not a big deal. Except the EU, which has some weird hangup about having euro clearing be physically done in the eurozone. Note that the EU has already tried to force this business out of the UK even before Brexit. The UK Government took the Commission to court and pointed out that their new regulations blatantly violated the EU's own commitments around discrimination, and won. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-wins-court-case-with-ecb-on-euro-clearing-1425462219 http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-wins-court-case-with-ecb-on-... The EU is no friend of the UK, or bankers. They see finance workers as resources to be fought over and pumped for tax revenue, nothing more.

notahacker 10y ago

Passporting regulations are an innovation which made it easier for EU countries to do business with other [EU/EEA] countries, not harder. Ultimately, if a branch of a company isn't in a jurisdiction which follows EU/US/Japanese law it can't expect to represent itself as a EU/US/Japanese branch and expect to do the same paperwork as an EU/US/Japanese branch. The innovation with passporting was entirely around assuming that your French or Estonian branch didn't need to do special Italian paperwork or set up an Italian subsidiary because they all sat under the same jurisdiction following the same regulations anyway. If you insist companies based on your territory should be free to not comply with EU regulations, you can't expect that same rule to continue applying

zigzigzag 10y ago
That is totally wrong. In fact the MiFiD II EU financial regulations that are coming into force in 2018 say that any country can essentially be passported into the block as long as they have an "equivalent" regulatory regime. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/theres-a-little-known-eu-rule-that-may-stop-the-brexit-banking-exodus.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/theres-a-little-known-eu-rule... So your statement that such companies "can't expect" is wrong - in fact they can expect that, because the EU already committed to it. This is posing a big problem for the EU right now because obviously on the day of exit the UK would still have an "equivalent" regime, so there'd be no grounds to force bankers to relocate. The details of MiFiD II were handled by technocrats whose brief was just to make trade easier, so such rules make sense: if the two regimes are close enough, why insist on EU membership? Nobody realistically expects the EU to stick to their own rules though. The EU never lets written law trump political demands. Just look at the Euro bailouts if you doubt that.
- notahacker 10y ago
  The word "equivalent" is doing a lot of work when a country has left a bloc with the specific stated reason that it wishes to be able to implement legislative change without respecting EU guidelines or authorities. MiFiD II doesn't apply to retail customers and "third country" passporting isn't automatic and can be withdrawn at short notice, so even if Liam Fox stops believing that free trade is the result of government inaction for long enough to ensure appropriate reciprocal arrangements are actually made, some business units are still going to see relocation as a more attractive alternative.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Retail banking isn't what is being talked about in these articles, euro clearing is (primarily).

simonh 10y ago

If your financial records and contracts are subject to a legal domain it's reasonable to require that they are present in that legal domain so that the law and legal requirements such as auditing and regulatory scrutiny can be enforced. This isn't some special new rule made up by the EU, the US and plenty of other countries have similar rules.