In the negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom over their future relationship, we see a high probability of a weak contractual outcome, given the dominance of politics over considerations of market efficiency. The EU will thus face a great deal of readjustment and regulatory realignment of its market for financial and other services.The future relationship will start out with closely aligned regulations which will allow equivalence, and therefore seamless transactions, to continue in many sectors for a number of years. As regulatory autonomy has been one of the main Brexit rationales, we expect divergence to increase after a couple of years. The UK will become a third country for financial service transactions, dependent on temporary equivalence rulings, whereas in the past it could do business under a comprehensive regulatory passport.London will remain a global financial hub, even as EU companies move operations out of the UK, set up additional licences and distribute activities across the EU. This will result in duplication and thus higher costs in both the UK and the EU as market participants strive to adjust to a future structure that will remain highly uncertain for years to come. In the EU-UK negotiations on financial services, the aims should be to seek an agreement to provide stability for a defined, though limited, time period; a plan for how to manage divergences and the regulatory barriers that may result; and an EU reckoning with what kind of financial market it wants. This would ensure a stable transition to what we assume will be a structurally very different link than existed when the UK was part of the EU.The UK has historically been both a business centre and policy leader in the financial sector. In its absence, the EU will need to decide how prominent a role finance should play and where regulatory and supervisory responsibilities should be located. Brexit can act as a catalyst for the EU to address what its capital markets should look like and how to get them there. The challenges of restructuring and recovery in the wake of COVID-19, of ensuring confidence in the euro and of preserving pensions systems all require highly integrated, functional and fair financial and capital markets, as public budgets are highly under stress. These integrated markets do not exist in the EU. Action now is of the essence.

This topical and important book identifies the short to medium-term economic, financial and social consequences of Brexit. Containing perspectives from leading thinkers across legal, economic and financial fields, it considers both the general effect of UK withdrawal on the European integration process, and the specific impact on the free movement of capital, goods and people. Addressing the main areas within both the UK and the EU that can and will be affected by Brexit, including the financial sector, immigration, social rights and social security, After Brexit: Consequences for the European Union will make fascinating reading for all those currently engaged in the study and practice of Law, Economics, Finance, Political Science, Philosophy, History and International Affairs.

The European Union is creating a Financial Union with a European Banking Union and a Capital Markets Union in reaction to lessons learned from incomplete financial markets integration, the Global Financial Crisis and European Sovereign Debt Crisis. This book critically analyses these projects for a more integrated, resilient and sustainable financial system at a time when the United Kingdom as the member state with the most developed capital markets and the leading global and European financial center, the City of London, is leaving the Union. Neoliberal financial globalization and markets integration policies have led to finance-led capitalism that caused the crises. By building on pre-crises integration ideas, the Union revives and expands the reach of capital markets-based financing and shadow banking. The book discusses the consequences of deeper integration and the future of European financial centers advocating an alternative financial markets integration based on theories explaining finacialization and finance-led capitalism.

Like many countries, the United Kingdom has been hit severely by the COVID-19 outbreak. A strict lockdown was essential to contain the pandemic but halted activity in many key sectors. While restrictions have eased, the country now faces a prolonged period of disruption to activity and jobs, which risks exacerbating pre-existing weak productivity growth, inequalities, child poverty and regional disparities. On-going measures to prevent a second wave of infections will need to be carefully calibrated to manage the economic impact.

This book takes an innovative approach to provide a mirror perspective of the legal systems of the UK and the EU in contemporary institutional scenarios. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the legal systems of the EU and the UK are facing challenges of epic proportions. Never before have the two legal orders been confronted with the simultaneous impact of a series of events. First, the effect of the “divorce” between the two regulatory systems caused by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The Negotiating Documents and the Draft Texts being discussed and aimed at leading to a `New Partnership’ are examined in the book. Second, the book discusses the impact of the coronavirus shock in all European economies leading to a substantial change of political perspective in the EU legal order implying innovative debt instruments. Third, it explores the consequences of the judicial activism of the German Constitutional Court undermining the strategic role of the European Central Bank and the primacy of the European Union Court of Justice. The book questions the effects deriving from the legacy, i.e. the foundations of the two legal systems, on handling the issues of our time, the impact on market regulation of the striking contemporary events and the unsettled consequences on policy of the current convulsing political and financial landscape. The book will be essential reading for those working in the areas of European public regulatory law.

A comprehensive, critical assessment of the EU after Brexit The European Union is a political order of peculiar stamp and continental scope, its polity of 446 million the third largest on the planet, though with famously little purchase on the conduct of its representatives. Sixty years after the founding treaty, what sort of structure has crystallised, and does the promise of ever closer union still obtain? Against the self-image of the bloc, Perry Anderson poses the historical record of its assembly. He traces the wider arc of European history, from First World War to Eurozone crisis, the hegemony of Versailles to that of Maastricht, and casts the work of the EU’s leading contemporary analysts – both independent critics and court philosophers – in older traditions of political thought. Are there likenesses to the age of Metternich, lessons in statecraft from that of Machiavelli? An excursus on the UK’s jarring departure from the Union considers the responses it has met with inside the country’s intelligentsia, from the contrite to the incandescent. How do Brussels and Westminster compare as constitutional forms? Differently put, which could be said to be worse?

This book tells the inside story of those who played key roles in setting up the organisations and combatting the crisis. In exclusive interviews, global financial leaders and ESM insiders provide a rich stock of perspectives and anecdotes that bring to life the urgency of the crisis as well as the innovative solutions found to resolve it. The European Stability Mechanism and its temporary predecessor the EFSF provided billions of euros in loans to five hard-hit euro area countries during the European financial and sovereign debt crisis of the early 2000s, helping to safeguard the stability of those countries and the euro area as a whole. Initially, the crisis-torn euro area was ill-equipped institutionally, but the rapid establishment of the firewalls, the assistance programmes, deep‐seated country reforms, the strengthening of European institutions, and extraordinary European Central Bank measures shielded Europe from a euro area break-up. With the EFSF/ESM set-up, its managers aspired to create a new, more entrepreneurial international financial institution, one that is agile enough to respond quickly to new challenges, while still ensuring the strict governance befitting an organisation pursuing a public mission. The euro area has emerged from near disaster in more robust shape. As Europe strives to further strengthen its architecture in preparation for any possible future crises, it is important to reflect upon how the euro area reinvigorated its fortunes and draw the relevant lessons for future crisis management in Europe and beyond.