EMA warns HQ move may cause ma­jor tur­moil, se­ri­ous­ly de­lay­ing new drug ap­provals

The Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency on Tues­day warned that it could lose a ma­jor­i­ty of its staff based on which of the 19 cities vy­ing to host the med­i­cines reg­u­la­tor is se­lect­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil in No­vem­ber, threat­en­ing the pace of new drug ap­provals even in best-case sce­nar­ios for at least two years.

Based on the re­sults of a sur­vey com­plet­ed by 92% of EMA’s staff ear­li­er this month, the agency says it could lose be­tween 19% and 94% of its staff de­pend­ing on which city is se­lect­ed as its fu­ture host. Politi­co first re­port­ed that Am­s­ter­dam is the top choice among EMA staff.

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