Brexit effect: EU medicines agency HQ moves out of London

The agency that evaluates medicines needs to be located in a country within the European Union. The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29, with or without an agreement on life beyond Brexit.

The headquarters of regulator European Medicines Agency (EMA) has become the first casualty of Brexit: it closed its doors for the final time in London’s Canary Wharf on Friday to relocate to Amsterdam, as the Westminster impasse continues.

British Union flags fly in front of The Houses of Parliament in London, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019. British Prime Minister Theresa May launched a mission to resuscitate her rejected European Union Brexit divorce deal, setting out plans to get it approved by Parliament. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) (AP)

The agency that evaluates medicines needs to be located in a country within the European Union. The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29, with or without an agreement on life beyond Brexit.

The EMA said in a tweet on Friday: “Today, EMA staff lowered the 28 EU flags and symbolically said goodbye to their London offices. Guido Rasi (executive director) expressed his thanks to the UK for its contribution to the work of the Agency and for having been a gracious host of EMA since 1995.”

Jeremy Farrar, director of the biomedical research charity organisation Wellcome Trust, tweeted that it was a “very sad day for the UK” and “a great day for the Netherlands”, while Labour member of the European parliament Claude Moraes said he was disappointed.

Simon Fraser, vice-chair of think-tank Chatham House and a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, told The Guardian: “Losing the European Medicines Agency HQ is a significant loss for London and for the UK.”