Cameron’s lobbying helps keep City in the forefront of Europe

By MARTIN FLANAGAN
Published on 15/12/2012 00:00

A TOP City figure has applauded the UK government’s “considerable success” in keeping Britain at the heart of EU financial decision-making at this week’s summit.

Chris Cummings, chief executive of TheCityUK, the financial services trade boy and support group, said the robust lobbying of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne had helped avert the danger of the Square Mile being undermined.

The relief in the City came the day after eurozone finance ministers accepted that rights of non-eurozone members of the single market would be protected under the forthcoming single currency banking union supervised by the European Central Bank.

Cummings said: “The government has lobbied hard and achieved considerable success with the deal they managed to do. The continuing turmoil in the eurozone meant banking union there was needed to stabilise things.

“But we had been very concerned the City of London could have been de-prioritised as a result. There’s no doubt that the position of the City would have been lessened if the deal had not gone through the way it has, with its competitiveness affected over the long term.”

TheCityUK chief said this danger had largely been averted “because the deal done respects all EU members… It is a good outcome.”

The Square Mile had been worried ahead of this week’s key Brussels summit that a two-speed European Union would develop to the City’s disadvantage because of banking union.

It came as Cameron said in Brussels yesterday that the deal would allow eurozone members to make “changes that they need and we will be able to argue for changes that we need”.