No special status for Paris finance jobs after Brexit - minister

MONTEVRAIN, France (Reuters) - France is determined to make Paris attractive for banks after Britain leaves the European Union, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Thursday, but without any special status for financial-services workers.

Sapin responded to comments by French financial lobby Paris Europlace, which told Reuters earlier on Thursday it wanted special status in French labour law for executives of financial firms to make Paris more attractive.

"The idea is to create a status whereby common rules on labour rights are waived," Arnaud de Bresson, chief executive of Paris Europlace, told Reuters.

But Sapin told Reuters: "We cannot have a specific status for jobs in the financial sector."

European financial centres, especially Frankfurt and Paris, have been mounting a charm offensive, saying they expect banks to start moving some operations from London next year to ensure continued access to the EU market after Britain leaves.

Bresson said his lobby group would put to the government in mid-November a set of regulatory and fiscal proposals they believe are necessary to lure London-based firms.

Ideas for setting up a special economic zone for companies moving from London are also circulating among lobbyists, Bresson said.

Some bankers were sceptical about such a move. "I am not convinced they’ll be able to achieve that," a senior banking source said.

Measures taken recently in France include the extension of a tax relief regime for expatriates to eight years from five.

Opposition politicians vying for next year's presidential election have repeatedly said the government's post-Brexit plans do not go far enough.

France must fix its "many mistakes" on tax if it is to benefit from an exodus of business after Brexit, former prime minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday. Opinion polls say he is likely to win the presidential election.

Juppe said he would scrap a wealth tax and cut corporate tax if elected in May, and said he opposed parliament's plans to increase a transactions tax on shares.

Last week, in a first reading of next year's budget bill, the lower house backed an increase in the tax to 0.3 percent from 0.2 percent and its extension to cover intra-day trading.

(Reporting by Myriam Rivet, Julien Ponthus and Maya Nikolaeva; Additional reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Tom Heneghan)