IRSG response to Balance of Competences Review- Single Market: Financial Services and the Free Movement of Capital

Published 23 Jan 2014

The IRSG has submitted a response HM Treasury's call for evidence in response to the Balance of Competences Review – Single Market: Financial Services and the Free Movement of Capital. The response notes that access to the EU Single Market is vital to the continued success of UK-based financial and professional services firms, and that policy makers and regulators must engage fully with the industry to ensure targeted, coherent regulation.

In particular, the response concludes that:

• Access to the Single Market is vital to the continued success of UK-based financial and professional services firms.
• European regulatory architecture needs to be coherent enough to be implemented at an EU level where appropriate, but flexible enough to allow national implementation to reflect local markets.
• Proposed regulation needs to be subject to more rigorous cost benefit analysis and impact assessment.
• Regulation needs to be properly targeted, and that requires policy makers and regulatory authorities to engage fully with the industry in an appropriate consultative framework.
• Following the regulatory reforms introduced in response to the global financial crisis, policy makers need to enable financial services to support economic growth across the wider economy, across the whole EU.
• The UK government needs to protect the integrity of the Single Market, as the banking union in the euro area begins to take effect.

You may also be interested in the IRSG's response to the Balance of Competences Review- Economic and Monetary Policy.