Romanian Health minister retorts to EMA employees’ reluctance to relocate to Bucharest

Romanian Health Minister Florian Bodog has stated on Friday that the option of the experts working within the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is not a standard for the agency’s choosing the country to be relocated after leaving its HQs in London’s Canary Wharf, relocation estimated in March 2019. The Romanian minister says that the relocation decision will be most probably a political one.

His statement comes after the release of an internal study among the EMA’s staff, that revealed that nine in ten employees would rather quit than move to such cities as Bucharest, Sofia or Warsaw.

Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria are among the countries submitting bids to host the European agency. The final decision on a new location will be taken in November.

“The internal poll is not a standard for choosing the country where EMA will be relocated. We would like Romania to host it, likewise the other bidding countries. We are on schedule with all activities, we went to Brussels the past days and we presented Romania’s bid. On the other hand, we had two meetings with the European Health commissioner and we also approached this topic (…),” Bodog stated, stressing that the desire of the EMA employees is not a benchmark, while the relocation decision will be political.

Politico.eu has reported recently that a study among the employees of the European Medicines Agency show that less than a half of them would be willing to move to nine countries out of those 19 that have bid to host it, and nine in ten employees would choose to resign than move to Bucharest, Warsaw or Sofia.