The request for extra staff made by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) - which is having to move from London to Amsterdam as a result of Brexit - has yet to receive the support of the European Commission.
This is the reply made by the institution on 24 August to a written parliamentary question from Biljana Borzan (S&D, Croatia), Karin Kadenbach (S&D, Austria), Kateřina Konečná (GUE/NGL, Czech Republic) and Piernicola Pedicini (EFDD, Italy).
In a press release issued in early August, the EMA - which currently employs around 900 people - suggested that it may be faced with losing around 30% of its staff, with a high degree of uncertainty surrounding staff retention in the medium term (see EUROPE 12076).
In its written response to the MEPs' question, the Commission states that in the framework of the budgetary procedure for 2019, it had received a request from the EMA for an extra 40 contract agents for a temporary period.
The “request and information provided by EMA were judged as not being sufficiently documented to support such an increase in staff, even for a temporary period, taking into account also the relatively large size of the Agency”, the institution explained, stressing that any request for staff increases has to be properly substantiated via the budgetary procedure. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)