Hi °C | Lo °C Gordon Brown appears to have fought off those in Europe who seek to exert greater control over regulation of the City of London.
The Prime Minister may have accepted an upgrade of three EU-wide advisory committees on banking, insurance and securities regulation to full-blown watchdog status, but also secured the crucial right for the UK to ignore any decisions by the committees if they have any fiscal implications.
Brussels would not be able to force Britain to bail out an ailing bank, say.
Nor will the PM be worried about losing the argument over who should chair a new body on systemic risk. He had wanted the chair to revolve among member states, but it will instead remain in the gift of members of the European Central Bank. But crucially, the systemic risk council will have no more powers to impose its views on Britain than the other new supervisory bodies the EU is committed to.
For Europhobes, the suspicion remains that EU reforms are a cunning French plan to pinch some of the market dominance London's financial services industry has enjoyed. They may be right, but if so, President Sarkozy is going to have do better than this.
