London has finally discovered which European cities are taking thousands of its jobs after the European Union announced the new homes for the two EU agencies that are about to shift from Canary Wharf to Europe because of Brexit.
The European Medicines Agency will move from its London headquarters (left) to Amsterdam and the European Banking Authority will shift to Paris. The two agencies directly employed 1,050 people in London but their loss will take away many more jobs because of the impact of the agencies on hotel bookings, rental properties, private schooling and many smaller businesses that profited from the conferences and visitors attracted by the agencies.
Their loss is also a blow to the UK pharmaceutical and finance industries, which have long benefitted from having the regulatory and approval bodies close at hand.
There was fierce competition between cities in the remaining 27 EU member states for the right to host the agencies and the final choices followed such hard-fought contests that the decisions were tied, and the names of the winners had to be drawn from a ballot box.
The Dutch capital beat Milan to get the EMA when lots were drawn after three rounds of Eurovision-style voting had resulted in a dead heat. Paris won the race to take the EBA after the favourite Frankfurt – home of the European Central Bank – was knocked out in the second round.
“Amazed” in Brussels
The Ministers for European Affairs from the remaining 27 member states took less than three hours to decide the new home of the EMA, which now employs 900 people in Canary Wharf. The decision on the banking agency (left), which employs 150 people and is also based in Canary Wharf, was made in little more than an hour.
After a five-month beauty contest, Amsterdam beat 18 other cities ranging from fancied contenders such as Copenhagen and Bratislava to outsiders such as Bucharest and Sofia.
The British Government was powerless to stop the shift of these two prized regulatory bodies, which were lured to London by previous Conservative prime ministers. The Department for Exiting the European Union (DfEEU) had initially suggested the agencies might somehow stay in London, claiming rather implausibly that their future would be subject to the Brexit negotiations, a suggestion that drew amazement in Brussels.
Speaking before the vote on Monday, the EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier, said “ardent advocates of Brexit” had contradicted themselves about the EU’s rules.
EU Splits Costs
“Brexit means Brexit,” said Barnier (left), turning Theresa May’s line back on her. “The same people who argue for setting the UK free also argue that the UK should remain in some EU agencies. But freedom implies responsibility for building new UK administrative capacity,” he told a Brussels conference hosted by the Centre for European Reform.
“The 27 will continue to deepen the work of those agencies, together,” he said. “They will share the costs for running those agencies. Our businesses will benefit from their expertise. All of their work is firmly based on the EU treaties which the UK decided to leave.”
The shift of the two European agencies is another link out of the chain that connects British and continental Europe’s science and medicine. Membership of the EMA, like membership of other agencies including Euratom, which regulates aspects of nuclear safety, requires recognising the European court of justice (ECJ).
And for reasons that many lawyers, academics and ordinary voters struggle to understand, leaving the jurisdiction of the ECJ has become one of the defining purposes of leaving the EU.
No one was aware of Theresa May’s antipathy to the court until it emerged unexpectedly in her speech to the Conservative Party conference last October. “Our laws will be made not in Brussels but in Westminster,” she declared. “The judges interpreting those laws will sit not in Luxembourg but in courts in this country. The authority of EU law in Britain will end.” Those three sentences have come to frame the whole negotiation process that is now under way.
by Bob Graham
The post Brexit: Big UK Jobs Loss to Paris & Amsterdam appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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