Posted by Michael Wonder on 20 Nov 2017
Paris and Amsterdam win Brexit races for London-based EU agencies
20 November 2017 - French capital wins EBA, No. 1 Dutch city to host EMA.
France and the Netherlands won the contests to host two London-based European Union agencies in the first concrete political victories in the battle for Brexit spoils.
The EU’s banking authority will move to Paris and the medicines regulator will relocate to Amsterdam by the time Britain departs from the 28-nation bloc in March 2019. The two cities emerged victorious against a slew of other candidates after a series of secret ballots by EU governments on Monday in Brussels. In each case, a drawing of lots after a tie in the third and last round was needed to reach a final result.
“It was a tight competition,” Matti Maasikas, deputy minister for European affairs of Estonia, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, told reporters after the voting by the bloc’s general-affairs ministers. “It fell to me to draw the lot.”
