Brexit: EMA to lose 30% Staff?

The European Medicines Agency published a press release and announced the next phase of its business continuity plan. The launch of this next phase will be on 1 October 2018 at the latest.

The plan is important to focus on core activities related to the evaluation and supervision of medicines. One of the biggest challenges is the loss of staff members caused by the relocation of the Agency to Amsterdam. It is now clear that "the Agency will lose more staff than initially anticipated". It is expected to lose about 30% of staff. What makes it even more challenging is the fact that people already started to leave the Agency. As a consequence, EMA will have to further "reprioritise its resources to fully maintain its core activities".

What are the consequences?

EMA will start to temporarily scale back or suspend additional activities like for example:

• Collaboration at international level
• Harmonisation of global medicine regulation (EMA will only take a "reactive role")
• Development and revision of guidelines
• Holding of non-product-related working parties
• Organisation and attendance at stakeholder meetings
• Clinical data publication

Source: EMA press release "Brexit preparedness: EMA to further temporarily scale back and suspend activities".