A view from The City of London in Brussels

The City of London Corporation office in Brussels aims to promote and reinforce the competitiveness of the Square Mile and in particular UK-based international professional and financial services. It liaises between the City, the EU institutions and EU Member States, to continue a strong, functioning UK-EU dialogue.

The City Brussels blog provides regular insight into how the UK-EU relationship is evolving in professional and financial services. It looks at how both EU and UK policy is changing and affecting the relationship.

I get asked a lot if the U.K. is using its new freedom outside the EU to diverge from EU standards. But I do not like the term ‘divergence’, since we will now have two autonomous regulatory processes, and regulation never seems to stand still on either side.  We hope that as well as a natural degree of fair competition, there will also be a strong degree of natural alignment as both sides follow global standards and address common challenges such as climate change together.

"A view from The City of London in Brussels" intends to highlight both opportunities for alignment and collaboration between the UK and the EU as well as areas of tension.'

Nick Collier, Managing Director of the Brussels office of the City of London Corporation

About the author

Nick Collier joined the City of London Corporation as its new Managing Director of the Brussels office in March 2019. He was previously Global Head of Government Relations at Refinitiv (Thomson Reuters) and before that worked at a range of organisations in the financial services sector, including Morgan Stanley and the Bank of England and, until recently, served as Chair of TheCityUK’s Public Affairs Group as well as Deputy Chair of the International Regulatory Strategy Group. Nick is chair of diplomatic engagement at the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange. He holds a MSC in Economics and Finance from the London School of Economics and a BA from Oxford.