A financial advisory body and a City firm have called on the EU and UK to deliver a ‘bespoke Brexit deal’ rather than try and adapt existing frameworks.

In a report released today, the International Regulatory Strategy Group and Hogan Lovells said any deal should allow ‘mutual market access and deliver the same levels of access rights to those currently available’.

The report, called ‘The EU’s third country regimes and alternatives to passporting,’ concludes: ‘it is in the interests of both the UK and the EU (and of consumers in each) to retain some degree of access to each other’s markets’.

However, the recommendation will be at least partially at odds with the government’s own position – revealed earlier this week.

In a speech last week prime minister Theresa May promised to end the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union and said the UK would leave the single market.

She added that she wanted the government to ‘have as much access’ as possible without being a member.

Rachel Kent, global head of financial institutions sector at Hogan Lovells, said: ‘A bespoke arrangement establishing mutual rights of access would benefit both the EU and the UK by securing continuity for financial services.’



The Law Society had previously listed continued access to the CJEU as a priority for England and Wales-based lawyers.

In its submission to the Department for Exiting the European Union and the Ministry of Justice, Chancery Lane also said the UK should focus on ‘maintaining, or introducing arrangements equivalent to EU directives on establishment and professional qualifications, mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments and maintaining collaboration in policing, security and criminal justice'.

Today’s report also says:

  • Access rights under a mutual access arrangements should seek to cover as 'broad a scope of activities as are currently covered’ under the passporting regime.
  • Arrangements should include robust processes and procedures that provide legal certainty; and
  • When the criteria for mutual access have been agreed, the UK and the EU should seek immediate mutual recognition that the other party meets the relevant criteria based on their regimes matching as at Brexit.

The report will be published today at the London office of Hogan Lovells, in Holborn.