On 31 January 2020, Luxembourg’s financial supervisory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (the CSSF) issued press release 20/03. The communication follows up on previous CSSF communications in the context of Brexit and notably press releases 19/05, 19/18, 19/33, 19/34, 19/41, 19/43, 19/48 and 19/54 regarding the transitional regime under the laws of 8 April 2019 on Brexit and the mandatory notifications through the eDesk portals.

Following the formal adoption of the withdrawal agreement by the Council of the European Union on 30 January 2020, the UK left the EU with a withdrawal agreement on 31 January 2020. According to the terms of the withdrawal agreement, a time-limited transition period will last until 31 December 2020. During this transition period, EU laws and regulations will continue to apply in the UK and UK entities can continue to work in Luxembourg on the basis of their passporting rights.

The CSSF communicated that a hard Brexit scenario was therefore no longer relevant and, as a result, its previous decisions granting the 12-month transitional regime to UK entities and all notifications made in that context through the dedicated eDesk portals would lapse and the dedicated eDesk portals would close with immediate effect on 31 January 2020.

The CSSF stressed that impacted entities should continue to take all necessary steps to prepare and anticipate the end of the transition period, including making continued progress on contingency planning, to ensure that customers and investors are adequately informed of any steps taken in order to mitigate potential “cliff-edge” issues after the end of the transition period.

CSSF press release 20/03 can be found here.