London places the EU in a guard against the risk of "self-injury" in the financial sector

LONDON/BERLIN (Reuters) – european companies would be losers if the european Union was trying to impose barriers in the british sector of the Finance, warned on Thursday the british government, while the chief negotiator of the Europe, Michel Barnier reaffirmed that London could not hope for negotiations “on the map”.

Since the official release of the United Kingdom of the european Union, on the 31st January last, the two parties have entered into a period of transition, scheduled until the end of the year, to reach an agreement on their future relationship.

In the meantime, the main rules and european bonds continue to apply to the United Kingdom.

“There are very few places in the world where there is a capital market as deep and as wide (to the City)”, said the minister of the cabinet Office, Michael Gove, to the committee of the House of Lords in charge of the Brexit.

“If it happened that the EU is deliberately erecting itself a barrier on the access of our financial services to its market, the losers would be investors in shares of companies in the EU who would not be able to get the best price for the transactions they would like to achieve”, he added.

“This would be a new example of self-harm on the part of Europeans,” continued Gove.

The chief negotiator of the British, David Frost, is questioned, for its part, the slow pace of discussions. “But we are in the hands of the EU, for that is how much time it will take”, he said.

Its younger european counterpart, the French Michel Barnier, has called for his part the British to be more realistic and forget any possibility of negotiating “a la carte”.

“There should be more realism on the part of London in the period ahead, if they want an agreement ordered to withdraw from the single market and the customs union”,-he said Thursday at the microphone from the German radio station Deutschlandfunk.

“But we will not make progress if the British continue to pick and choose for themselves the best of both worlds,” he added.

Stressing that the fishing, the conditions of competition and the rules of governance were the files the toughest of negotiations, Michel Barnier, has estimated that complete an agreement by the end of the year would be “extremely difficult, but still possible”.

(Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton in London and Madeline Chambers in Berlin; French version by Henri-Pierre Andre)