European Commission and UK negotiators set out a draft of the terms of the UK's exit from the European Union. The UK reported that the draft reflects "agreement in principle between the UK and EU negotiating teams on the full legal text." In addition, the European Commission and the UK issued an outline of the political declaration on the future EU-UK relationship.
The draft agreement states that the UK will be treated by the EU as a member state (without requiring UK participation in EU institutions and governance structures) during the "transition period," which will run until December 31, 2020, but may be extended.
Commentary / Assia Damianova
In the area of financial services, there is a commitment to work towards granting of equivalence for UK-regulated firms by June 2020. However, the concern on the UK side has always been with the ability of the Commission to withdraw any equivalence decisions: no process for withdrawal of equivalence decisions has been spelled out so far, and, therefore, it remains subject to future negotiation.
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