London is losing the European Medicines Agency to Amsterdam and the European Banking Authority to Paris, in one of the first concrete signs of Brexit as the UK prepares to leave the European Union.

The two cities won the agencies after tie breaks that saw the winner selected by drawing lots from a large goldfish-style bowl.

The Dutch capital beat Milan in the lucky dip after three rounds of Eurovision-style voting on Monday had resulted in a dead heat.

Paris won the race to take the European Banking Authority from London, beating Dublin in the final, after the favourite Frankfurt was knocked out in the second round.

The EU’s 27 European affairs ministers, minus the UK, took less than three hours to decide the new home of the medicines agency, which employs 900 people in Canary Wharf, London. The decision on the banking authority, which employs 150 and is also based in Canary Wharf, was made in little more than an hour.

Amsterdam beat competition from 18 cities ranging from fancied contenders such as Copenhagen and Bratislava to outsiders such as Bucharest and Sofia.



Eight cities were in the running for the banking authority, which was set up in 2011 to tighten up regulation after the financial crisis.

The contest provoked the first public recriminations over Brexit among the EU27, after no eastern members made it beyond the first rounds. Slovakia’s minister Tomáš Drucker said he abstained from the final votes on the medicines agency, because no countries from his region had been successful in the opening stage. “I think it’s not fair and it’s not a good message for the European inhabitants.”

Italy’s Europe minister Sandro Gozi said Milan’s loss to Amsterdam in a tie-breaker was like losing the World Cup on the toss of a coin.

But for the victors, there was relief. “We are delighted, it was very tight, it was nerve wracking to be honest,” said Dutch minister Halbe Zijlstra. France’s success will be seen as a victory for Emmanuel Macron, although his minister, Nathalie Loiseau, expressed sadness that Lille had lost out in the race for the medicines agency.

The British government was powerless to stop the relocation of these two prized regulatory bodies, secured by previous Conservative prime ministers. The Department for Exiting the European Union had claimed the future of the agencies would be subject to the Brexit negotiations, a claim that caused disbelief in Brussels.



Speaking before the vote on Monday, the EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier, said “ardent advocates of Brexit” had contradicted themselves on EU rules.



“Brexit means Brexit,” he said, turning Theresa May’s line back on her. “The same people who argue for setting the UK free also argue that the UK should remain in some EU agencies. But freedom implies responsibility for building new UK administrative capacity,” he told a Brussels conference hosted by the Centre for European Reform.



“The 27 will continue to deepen the work of those agencies, together,” he said. “They will share the costs for running those agencies. Our businesses will benefit from their expertise. All of their work is firmly based on the EU treaties which the UK decided to leave.”

The former business secretary and Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said Davis’s suggestion the UK could keep the agencies showed just how little grasp the government has of the potential consequences of Brexit.”

“This marks the beginning of the jobs Brexodus. Large private sector organisations are also considering moving to Europe and we can expect many to do so over next few years.”

The European Medicines Agency opened in 1995, having been secured for London by John Major’s government. Seen as one of the EU’s most important agencies, it carries out assessments and issues approvals for medicines across the union. The agency is also a boon for hoteliers, as 36,000 scientists and regulators visit each year.

The European Banking Authority started work in 2011 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to tighten up financial supervision after the 2008 crash.

Malta, which had bid as a country, Zagreb and Dublin dropped out of the race for the medicines agency before voting began. The first two gave up any hope of getting an agency, while Ireland hoped to boost its chances of winning the European Banking Authority.



Barcelona’s chances went up in smoke after Catalonia’s contested independence vote on 1 October plunged the wealthy region into crisis.

Although the relocation was agreed relatively quickly by EU standards, the move will inevitably cause disruption. In the run-up to the vote, the EMA said that even a move to the staff’s top-choice city would prompt some workers to quit. Under the best-case scenario, 19% of staff are expected to resign rather than move.

The agency had argued that a move to less popular cities threatened “a public health crisis”, with “permanent damage” to the European system of drug approval.



The EU laid down six criteria to judge the bids, including the city’s ability to get the agency up and running on time, transport accessibility, school places and job opportunities for spouses.



Some newer member states had complained that the EU was reneging on a 2003 promise to give priority to countries without an EU agency, as “geographical spread” was only one of the elements to judge the bids. Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Cyprus and Slovakia do not have an EU agency.