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Why you should watch: Kyriakos Mitsotakis says the EU will review the S&GP – and that the outcome will be ‘in our favour’. Wonder what Germany’s likely next Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, makes of that – and how he will sell it to FDP voters. Still, post-Covid, the debt and deficit limits make little sense. As for the push for financial services to shift from London to Frankfurt, Paris etc, it may be a question of timing. Longer term, the trend is (fairly) clear, but, in the short term, there is certainly little appetite in Germany for taking on new business – or new risks. One good thing from COP: the IFRS is trying to sort out green from brown – and its proposal for an ISSB is a genuine step forward. Other than that, the message from Glasgow was mixed: eco-enthusiasts could see sunlit uplands. Cynics see only empty phrases. Other issues: the so-called banking package, Solvency 2 on sustainability, AFME on data sharing, and the usual confusion over CBDC.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Graham Bishop has been a fixture in the City of London since 1972, and deeply immersed in euro-issues since the far-off days of the Giovannini Commission. He set up his own consultancy in 2000, and has since become one of the most dedicated Brussels-watchers in the UK.
John O’Donnell is the chief European correspondent for Reuters, based in Frankfurt (though, pre-Covid) he was spending much of his time in Brussels. He is a former business correspondent for the Sunday Times. His current interests range from Russian money-laundering, to Taliban financing and the implications of the Wirecard scandal.