Professor Rosa M Lastra, Professor of International Financial and Monetary Law at QMUL's Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), will be talking at the International Monetary Fund on 24 October 2016?about ?Economic and Financial Governance in Europe after Brexit? [PDF 233KB]. Following some understanding of the pending legal issues, both from a domestic and European law perspective, the discussion will consider the possible scenarios for the UK-EU post Brexit trading relationships (EEA/Norwegian option, Swiss option, Turkish option, FTA option, WTO option) and the challenges of Brexit from the perspective of EU economic and financial governance.
Once the UK activates Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and negotiations formally commence, the UK will need to decide which parts of EU law it will retain (the European Communities Act 1972 will be repealed; but EU law is deeply embedded in the law of the UK in many intricate ways). Though financial services and the law that regulates them will feature prominently in the discussion (access to the single market, free movement, implications for passport rights etc) the debate will also reflect more broadly the current political and economic mood in Europe. The EU has been subject to a number of external shocks in recent years: first the global financial crisis, then the sovereign debt crisis in some Eurozone Member States, then the refugee crisis and now Brexit and possibly another banking crisis. With elections forthcoming in several key EU Member States, the EU is a critical juncture.