LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will reopen its temporary market access regime for European Union financial firms in September to tide companies over during London’s parting of ways with the bloc, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday.

Britain left the EU in January and a transition period ends in December. It has a “temporary permissions regime”, or TPR, to allow EU-based firms to continue serving customers in Britain for a limited period after that so they have time to obtain authorisation under Britain’s rules.

The TPR has been closed to new applications, but since then Britain has made it clear it will not apply for an extension to the transition period.

“Over 1,000 firms and over 600 fund managers have already notified us, and we will reopen the notification window on 30 September,” Nausicaa Delfas, the Financial Conduct Authority’s executive director for international, told a City & Financial online event.

“In short, my message to you is that we all need to continue to prepare for a range of scenarios, to be ready for the end of the year,” Delfas said.

Britain and the EU have missed an end of June deadline for completing “equivalence” assessments of each other’s rules to allow selected access to their respective financial markets, with London and Brussels blaming each other.

Delfas said allowing equivalence based access is the best way to avoid clashes in derivatives and share trading after December.

The EU is concerned that Britain will seek a competitive advantage by easing rules inherited from the bloc.

“We are not proposing some new deregulatory step,” Delfas said.

“On the contrary we very much support global standards, open markets and high regulatory standards.”

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