Financial institutions have realistic expectations of how they will serve customers from the European Union after Britain has left the Union next year. The institutions in question can also deal with the so-called “hard” Brexit without an agreement between London and Brussels.
This was pointed out by the Vice-President of EC Jyrki Katainen and cited by Reuters. He stressed on that London, should not perceive his words about EU preparing for a hard Brexit as a threat.
“It would be completely irresponsible to create an atmosphere where we can say, don’t worry, everything will go well and smoothly because we simply don’t know”, Katainen said.
According to his words, Brussels has warned the financial sector to prepare for both “soft” and “hard”, Brexit, although the EU’s aim is to reach a trade agreement with the United Kingdom to act after its exit from the Block.
“The feedback from the financial sector itself is that they are prepared, they are realistic not to take too much risk as their duty is to serve their clients”, Katainen said.
The other Vice-President of EC Valdis Dombrovskis commented that there is no financial instability due to Brexit.
The forecasts are that companies in Britain and in the European Union will face additional annual costs of 58 billion pounds, if a Brexit agreement is not reached, and more affected will be the British financial sector. In the absence of an agreement, trade between the UK and Member States will be carried out under WTO rules and tariffs.
The European Investment Bank is the EU’s main financing institution. It is a separate legal entity and its shareholders are the EU member states. Thus the member states set the bank’s broad policy goals and oversee the two independent decision-making bodies—the board of governors and the board of directors.
The Bank’s main objective is to contribute through its own and capital market resources to balanced and sustainable development of the common market in the interest of the Community. We must also add the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Development Bank to the Council of Europe, as well as the European Central Bank, which is already the central supervisory authority for banks in the euro area.
