EMA chief explains plans for temporary accommodation post-Brexit

As a result of the UK leaving the European Union effective March 29, 2019, the relocation of the European Medicines Agency from London to Amsterdam in the Netherlands is likely to cause some logistic problems, the EMA executive director Guido Rasi explained at a meeting in The Hague with Dutch health authorities.

Dutch Health Minister Bruno Bruins announced today that the EMA and its approximately 900 staff initially will be placed in the Sloterdijk neighborhood of western Amsterdam. The new headquarters is to be built in the Zuidas, or Southern Axis, is scheduled for completion in November 2019.

The decision that EMA will move to Amsterdam was welcomed by the Agency and its staff. The city ticks many boxes: it offers good transportation links for the thousands of experts who visit EMA every month. In fact, in a staff survey carried out last year, over 80% of the staff said they would be willing to move with the Agency to Amsterdam. It was their preferred new location.