Second Casualty: UK Commissioner Quits
Jonathan Hill, former leader of the House of Lords, has turned in his resignation as the UK Commissioner in the European Commission in the wake of the UK Brexit referendum. As the European Commissioner responsible for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, Hill was considered one of the most influential and important members of the Juncker commission.
According to The Guardian, Hill’s departure “became a foregone conclusion after the vote for Brexit, because many European politicians oppose having a Briton in charge of financial services when the UK is on its way out.”
Hill, a respected but relatively unknown figure in the UK before his appointment to commissioner in 2014, made his opinion concerning the referendum clear in an interview with Politico just two weeks before the election:
“I think it’s bad for the development of the single market in financial services, I think it’s bad for the European economy. I think it’s bad for financial stability.” (Jonathan Hill in Politico, June 15, 2016)
According to Politico, he further indicated that “a British exit from the European Union would be a lose-lose situation for both his country and Europe. An EU without Britain, he argued, would be a place with lower economic growth and more fragmented capital markets struggling to foster employment and entrepreneurship.”
This cover photo was originally posted to Flickr by Mission of Norway to the EU at https://flickr.com/photos/69307212@N02/16331897659. It was reviewed on by the FlickreviewR robot and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
