It’s the Euro’s fault

When the rules are vague, nobody wins

In Brussels we are used to a Byzantine level of Bureaucracy. Everything is regulated, every procedure and every decision is taken in round after round. But when it’s time to choose where to move the agencies left orphan by Brexit, the decision comes to a literal coin toss.

For the European Medicine Agency (EMA), the winner was Amsterdam. For the European Banking Authority (EBA), Paris got the upper hand. The EMA alone brings with itself almost a thousand employees with their families as well as 36 thousand visitors a year and satellite activities for up to 1,7 billions euro a year. This lack of income will not make Milan bankrupt, much like Dublin will continue to thrive without the EBA.

Nevertheless the methods chosen for the decision came not from a defined set of rules but, once again, from the intergovernmental side of the Union, the Council.  Once again, a big decision like this was left in the hands of backroom deals, alliances and, this time, just plain luck.

The image of the Union is in dire need of a refreshment and this sort of news can’t be beneficial. To be clear, the locations chosen were good, and Amsterdam was in fact the preferred staff choice of the agency. Even if Milan and Dublin won, the fact that it had to come to fate means that the mechanism is wrong. The envelope game is the tactic of the uncommitted, and that is a message the EU cannot afford to send right now.

On top of this, there is the problem of the divide between East and West. Bratislava was one of the cities running to host the EMA, but got discarded quite soon in the competition, while Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Milan raced on. It could have been a sign of goodwill towards the new members of the Union who often feel shunned, treated as second-class citizens compared to the west. Amsterdam and Paris definitely didn’t need the economical help of the agencies or the prestige they brought with them and this display of influence of the west doesn’t sit well with the public opinion in the east. On the other hand, it is also true that the staff made it clear, even though they technically didn’t have a say in the decision, that they wished to be moved somewhere in the west. That in case Bratislava got the assignment, the transition wouldn’t be as smooth as the Council hoped. This sort of “blackmail” is frowned upon and is quite unjustified from the point of view of those who wished for more and deeper integration. Nevertheless, these agencies are moving away because of Brexit, and the last thing the EU needs during this process is the rhetoric of a dictatorial Brussels who moves families away from London to redistribute them in the far away East.

All in all, the whole process was a display of utter incompetence, scheming and lack of transparency that dealt an image damage to the EU which is going to pile up on top of the usual eurosceptic rhetoric. Napoleon said he preferred lucky generals over capable ones. But the unlucky ones, in that case, couldn’t vote him out of office.