EU’s Reding warns Brexit would isolate London’s City

Reuters ^ | Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:43pm EST | John O’Donnell

[Olog-hai]

London’s financial services center would lose access to the wider European Union should Britain quit the bloc, the EU’s justice chief said on Monday, warning that such a move would reduce its status to that of an offshore center.

Viviane Reding’s blunt comments come amid a heated debate in Britain over its future in the 28-country European Union and will reinforce fears in the City of London that a departure from the EU will hurt its position as a global financial capital.

“The City would most definitely lose its unhindered access to the (EU’s) single market in the case of an exit,” Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner, told an audience at Cambridge University.

“EU member states would obviously have no interest in supporting what would then be an offshore financial center competing with their own financial firms,” she said. …

[Olog-hai]

Uh, yeah. And what was the European Union originally, from the perspective of member states? An offshore financial center competing with the financial firms of all the member states. Thanks for admitting the anti-competitive true nature of the EU, Reding.

[Buckeye McFrog]

what, and let someone like Francois Hollande get his mitts on it?

I would call that bluff if I were them.

[The Great RJ]

I hate to say that Reding and I are likely distant relatives from Luxembourg. Too bad she doesn’t recall the Luxembourg national motto: “We want to remain what we are”

[ScaniaBoy]

A good rant on Reding here:

EU policy: the truth flies out of the window

[familyop]

The economic tsunami from the east will get them either way, unless they begin producing in earnest.