Priorities for advancing UK-EU relations

A pragmatic path to a stronger relationship in financial and related professional services

15 July 2026

5 minutes

This report sets out a comprehensive, industry-led agenda to strengthen UK–EU cooperation in financial and related professional services. We undertook a thorough process of consultation with our members to inform this research, which focuses on practical, deliverable measures to reduce friction, improve predictability and support shared European priorities through more efficient outcomes across the European financial system and wider economy, while fully respecting the regulatory autonomy of both sides and keeping open a credible path to more ambitious long-term outcomes.

Financial and related professional services industry’s objectives

The UK-EU Leaders’ Summit and the subsequent Common Understanding (2025) were heavily weighted, like the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), in favour of streamlining trade in goods, not trade in services. Re-balancing is vital for many reasons, not least that Europe’s security, defence capability and economic resilience are increasingly interconnected. While the UK government is currently focused on improving the UK-EU relationship by prioritising goods trade and seeking automatic dynamic alignment for greater market access, our industry is clear on the following:

The UK and the EU must work together to address their many major shared challenges, including ongoing conflicts and the resulting increased defence procurement and funding needs; demographic shifts; energy transition; scaling up of Europe’s innovative businesses; and increasing geopolitical tensions and regionalisation of global trade.
Given the contribution that the financial and related professional services industries of the UK and the EU can make towards meeting these shared challenges, we urge that the industry and its priorities should be included as a central topic at future Leaders’ Summits and in any future iterations of the Common Understanding or similar agreements.
Crucially, almost all the priorities contained in this report are within the reach of both the UK and EU without any need to change the texts governing their existing UK-EU relationship (the Withdrawal Agreement, the TCA, and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on financial regulatory cooperation). While we have framed our proposals deliberately in this way to maximise the potential for deliverability, we are clear that ambition on financial and related professional services could be even higher than the options we outline and more ambitious mechanisms involving framework change could also be considered.
Automatic dynamic alignment of rules, as is being pursued for Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) / Agri-food regulation, is not appropriate for the UK’s financial and related professional services industry. As a large, diverse, and highly innovative industry, which combines globally systemic characteristics with unique competitive strengths, our ecosystem requires the UK regulatory authorities’ speed of decision taking, flexibility and agility, and could not operate effectively under arrangements that require it to automatically follow the lead of another jurisdiction with different priorities and needs.
Any wider proposals that go beyond cooperation – such as rejoining the Single Market or entering a Customs Union – need careful and separate consideration of their merits and challenges.

Priorities for advancing UK-EU relations

Financial and related professional services industry’s objectives

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