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Europe does not 'need' the City - Barnier
Michel Barnier, the European Union's chief negotiator, slapped down the the City of London and Mark Carney's claim that the bloc needs the square mile's financial services industry and said to stop "pleading" for mutual recognition and make do with 'equivalence' like Wall Street instead.
"Brexit will come at a cost - and this cost will be substantially higher for the UK than the EU."
"Some argue that the EU desperately needs the City of London, and that access to financing for EU27 business would be hampered - and economic growth undermined - without giving UK operators the same market access as today," Barnier said at a meeting of finance ministers in Bulgaria earlier.
"This is not what we hear from market participants, and it is not the analysis that we have made ourselves."
He rejected Theresa May's request for mechanisms that effectively preserved the status quo based on Britain and the EU reaching the same outcomes through different regulatory methods.
"Everything must change so that everything can stay the same", to paraphrase Lampedusa. But this will not work," he said.
"The equivalence system will operate in a more effective manner if the UK decides not to diverge from our financial regulation," he said before pointing out that the costs of the financial crisis were borne by taxpayers across the EU and not just in the EU.