On Saturday 30 September, the European Commission published its evaluation of the offerors of the member states interested in hosting the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency after Brexit (see EUROPE 11872). Although the document does not contain a ranking, it seems to consider that the Irish and Danish applications are fairly complete.
The European Medicines Agency - which is responsible for the scientific assessment, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines sold in the EU - is currently based in Canary Wharf (London), which means that it will have to move to a different member state once Brexit has taken place.
In June of this year, the heads of state or government agreed on six criteria to steer the process of selecting the new headquarters: the functionality of the location, its accessibility, education facilities for children of agency staff, employment/health, business continuity and geographical spread.
Assessing the completeness of the offers
Although only the member states can vote, the Commission has produced an assessment document to guide their choices. In its press release presenting the evaluation, it stresses that it is a factual and objective evaluation that constitutes neither a scoreboard nor a shortlist.
The summary of the valuation in any case goes no further than to list what the offers indicate or do not indicate. It emerges very clearly from the document that Ireland and Denmark are the only two countries that have not been effectively called to order over missing or incomplete information for each of these criteria. The only comment on the Irish offer concerns the absence of information on the number of places available at day schools and the only one on the Danish offer concerns the absence of indications regarding access to social security. The Italian, Portuguese, Slovakian and Spanish offers were also considered very complete, these countries having omitted only two different types of information.
On the other hand, the Commission identified a number of gaps in the Croatian offer: no timetable for the relocation, no details on how the location meets the specific criteria of the EMA, no information about transport between the airport and the proposed building, no figures on available places in primary education or accompaniment in primary education, no information on access to social security for EMA staff family members and no timetable to ensure continuity.
The explanatory document accompanying the assessment furthermore goes into greater detail on certain concepts, such as continuity. It indicates that the availability of one (or more) appropriate location(s), the option for the agencies to keep members of staff or recruit new ones, accessibility, the appropriate organisation of the relocation process and the financial conditions attached to the offer are all preconditions to be met in order to ensure a soft landing. Once again, the Commission looks at how the offers respond to the various criteria, for instance highlighting the extremely interesting conditions proposed by Austria (25 years rent-free) and Denmark (20 years).
The consequences of the referendum on the Spanish offer still unclear
When asked about the impact of the Catalonian referendum on the assessment of the Spanish offer (Barcelona) at the mid-day conference, European Commission spokesperson Margaritis Schinas said that this was not a matter for the Commission to respond to and that it is for the member states to decide which capitals the agency should move to. He went on to say that discussions will kick off at Coreper on Friday of this week. The assessment document can be consulted at: http://bit.ly/2xJQuYw. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)