On 23 October 2019, the Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC) published a letter to HM Treasury on the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill (Bill).

The FMLC considers it essential that the Bill is resuscitated and passed to ensure continuity and certainty for the financial services sector. The FMLC warns that uncertainty about whether the EU in-flight legislation set out in Section 1 of the Bill applies in the UK may have adverse consequences in respect of equivalence under the EU’s regulatory framework.

Due to the length of time since the Bill was first introduced, the FMLC proposes that amendments will need to be made to update it. For instance, Section 1 of the Bill will need to be updated to:

• remove references to provisions in Section 1 that now fall within scope of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; and
• include other pieces of EU legislation which have come into force on or after 1 April 2019 but will not come into effect before 1 November 2019 or 1 February 2020 (the possible dates Brexit may occur) such as certain provisions of the EMIR Refit Regulation..