The European Commission published a comparative summary on Saturday 30 September of the offers submitted by the eight member states wishing to host the headquarters of the European Baking Authority (EBA) from spring 2019 when the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union will become effective.
Presented in tabular form, the summary lists one after the other each of the six criteria agreed at the June European summit to inform the process of selecting the headquarters of the EBA: premises; accessibility; education facilities; labour market, social security, medical care; business continuity; geographical spread of EU agencies and bodies.
Assessment of the comprehensiveness of the offers. The eight candidate cities to host the European Banking Authority, which is currently based in London, are Brussels, Frankfurt, Dublin, Luxembourg, Prague, Paris, Warsaw and Vienna.
There is relatively easy access to all from anywhere in Europe and they all can boast significant availability of hotel rooms both for tourism and for existing economic activity. Dublin, sitting slightly more towards the margins, acknowledges that it has no direct flights to either Zagreb or Ljubljana.
The countries which already have a well-developed financial sector highlight possible synergies, notably when looking to recruit new talent. Luxembourg emphasises the availability of workers in the consultancy, banking and legal sectors; Frankfurt already hosts the ECB and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA); and Paris has the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Dublin, too, highlights its cultural and linguistic proximity with London.
To attract the EBA staff, the candidate cities set out their abilities to integrate children into the school system and spouses into the jobs market. Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris, however, are somewhat vague on the number of childcare and primary school places available, the Commission notes. Similarly, for Luxembourg and Prague, the offers provide no information on access for members of the families of EBA staff to the national social security system.
So that the move disrupts the work of the EBA as little as possible, the candidate cities vie with one other on how quickly the agency can be operational in its new premises. In Paris and Frankfurt, the premises will be available from mid-2018. Warsaw, Luxembourg and Dublin say they will be ready at the end of 2018.
In its offer, the Czech Republic repeats its commitment to join the euro area.
Informed by this analysis, the member states will discuss the candidacies in the course of the month of October with a view to coming to a political decision at the General Affairs Council in November.
The Commission has carried out the same exercise to assess the candidacies of the 19 member states wishing to host the European Medicines Agency (EMA) (see other article).
For more information, go to http://bit.ly/2yjDThK (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)