European Medicines Agency (EMA) closes London office with loss of 900 jobs | Hacker News Reader

European Medicines Agency (EMA) closes London office with loss of 900 jobs

theguardian.com

37 pointscirrus-clouds16 comments

This PDF from October 2017 lists the suitability of the candidate cities wanting to host the EMA: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Bonn, Bratislava, Brussels, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Lille, Malta, Milan, Sofia, Porto, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw, Zagreb

http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Other/2...

> Amsterdam won the bid to host the agency in 2017.

From the article.

Even though in this case the jobs went to The Netherlands, the Irish are probably best positioned to benefit from this act of economic suicide England is engaging in. They’re close to the UK and mainland Europe, they’re building a reputation for providing favorable conditions to large companies, and it’s less expensive. Beyond Ireland I think some other EU countries stand to benefit as well.

All told, when you consider that it’s not as though England is going to break out in calm stability regardless of how Brexit proceeds, I think the result is going to be an irretrievable loss for England in particular, and the UK in general. I also wouldn’t be shocked if this (and demographic shift) ultimately leads to a reunification in Ireland, and independence passing for Scotland. At that point I guess England and Wales can try to figure out what to do with all of that unused and unwanted infrastructure in London.

Can someone explain why this is a big deal? It makes sense to me that EU agencies wouldn't be stationed outside of the EU, so the fact that they're moving doesn't seem like it's a big deal in the grander Brexit scheme of things. Is this because this is a very prestigious agency?

It’s because we need to say “I fucking told you so” every time someone suffers for making a stupid decision like brexit.

I think it's more that people felt quite bitter about being smeared with the tepidly disgusting "project fear" soundbite when criticising what brexit was hoping to achieve before the referendum was held.

Expect to hear every time "project fear" was right, because, despite the fact that nobody who voted leave will change their mind it's still incredibly cathartic to hear it.

People who voted leave probably still feel that way, but given the demographics of the vote many of them will have died, just as many people who were below voting age no longer are.

The "old people should not be able to vote" argument should die already. If anything, the weight of the vote of someone who's spent his entire life living in a place and paying taxes should be higher.

than the people who have to live through the consequences of said vote?

What's to stop the older generation soaking up the entire wealth of their generation and the current one?

I can very easily answer that: nothing. That's exactly why in the UK (state) pensions come in at more than twice the budget that's used for the NHS and why almost nobody under 30 can afford their own place.

The "old people should not be able to vote" argument should die already. If anything, the weight of the vote of someone who's spent his entire life living in a place and paying taxes should be higher.

I didn’t make that argument, in fact it’s not even orthogonal to what I did say. I suppose you could say that if I took any position, it was that children and dead people can’t vote, but that still feels like an observation, not an argument. All I did was state how demographics have shifted, that is all.

Most of the major Brexit proponents said (and continue to say) that jobs will not be moving abroad, and everyone in the UK will be better off.

Evidently, this is false.

I thought they said that about private sector jobs, not EU jobs? I'll admit that I haven't been following it too closely since I'm not in the EU.

Fair point, it wouldn’t make sense for EU jobs to not be in the EU, but it’s not like that distinction is ever made in the discourse either.

Either way, it’s fewer jobs in the UK.

For a while David Davis seemed to think the UK could hold on to the EMA. See https://pharmaphorum.com/news/uk-keeping-european-medicines-... for example.

The commenters here are missing a key point, namely that the big impact will not be the move of the agency itself, but all that is linked to it. At the basics are skilled and well paid jobs, local rent and contractors, travel and hotel costs of experts coming over, expenses of expat staff, their partners, their children, ... etc. So you right away lose a lot of income linked to this.

But what most people miss is all the indirect effects. E.g. if I'm a medical consultancy, where will I open new offices? If I'm a legal expert on the approval processes, where will I have the easiest access to any events, publications and informal chats with key experts? If I'm hosting lobby or info events, where will I reach the key people I'd love to hear about my new product/service/insight/... If I'm a researcher, which university will I use as the project partner most likely to have good access to the EMA expertise? English will still be important, but which one will be the key language to reach EMA if locally hired staff (think contract staff such as often secretaries, logistics people, admin staff, ..) speak Dutch as their first language?

EMA and similar bodies (think any kind of stock exchange, regulatory body, government agency, ...) are central points in networks that link and motivate lots of other things to happen. In the long term loss of EMA will not throw London off the map, but it will over time weigh more and more decisions in the direction of Amsterdam (or at least away from London).

I have no idea why such articles get posted to HN. Is the Guardian desperate?

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