This thread is about new members entering (e.g. Croatia) and old members leaving (e.g. Britain) the Union, as well as other moves and changes in the European collective collective.

Today is a day to divvy up the spoils. With Brexit EU agencies will leave Britain, and 19 European cities are competing to grab European Medicines Agency (EMA) and 8 cities are fighting over the European Banking Authority (EBA). 

Politico has an overview of the election procedure, How to watch the Brexit battle for EU agencies like a pro and helpfully comes up with the bookies' odds. Fight! It's the EU agency free-for-all

For the EMA:Milan -- 2/1
Bratislava -- 5/1
Lille -- 6/1
Amsterdam -- 10/1
Copenhagen -- 10/1
Vienna -- 10/1
Barcelona -- 16/1
Dublin -- 16/1
Helsinki -- 16/1
Porto -- 16/1
Stockholm -- 16/1
Bonn -- 20/1
Warsaw -- 20/1
Zagreb -- 20/1
Athens -- 25/1
Brussels -- 25/1
Bucharest -- 25/1
Sofia -- 25/1
Valletta -- 33/1

For the EBA:
Frankfurt -- 6/4
Vienna -- 2/1
Dublin -- 5/1
Paris -- 8/1
Prague -- 16/1
Warsaw -- 16/1
Brussels -- 20/1
Luxembourg City -- 20/1

Frankfurt is too far ahead of any other to be much of a competition, but my guess Milan won't get EMA. Which one will get it is harder to say. The Nordic cities have significant medical clusters, but here it's every city for themselves. Stockholm would love to get it, but by participating they make it less likely that Copenhagen would win, likewise with Helsinki's candidature. My guess is Amsterdam or Bratislava (Bratislava is very close to Vienna, but lower cost and wider bloc support). Amsterdam is closer to Britain geographically and culturally, and a cluster of its own. Schiphol is a major hub. While Bratislava is 39 minutes away from Vienna Airport, and 17 minutes away from Bratislava airport, neither are exactly major ones. 

Perhaps not a major hub, but I did have several layovers in Vienna Airport before ever visiting the city itself.

By all means, I prefer medium-sized airports to the huge ones for user experience. Heathrow is my least favourite airport i Europe, followed by Charles De Gaulle. Schiphol is number three or four I guess.

For its size I kind of like Schiphol, but all of these have more stress and more walking, while the medium-sized one are smooth and efficient, at least the better ones. I actually haven't been to Vienna airport, but my wife passed through yesterday and liked it. Outbound the transfer was around 50 minutes, which would have been touch-and-go with Heathrow, and a bit stressful in Schiphol, but with plenty of time to spare in Vienna.

Anyway, a medium-sized airport can't compete with the number of departures, so that would be a drawback for an agency that presumably should have good connections to all member countries. 

Well I am glad that my nation will in due course be no longer with the shambles known as the EU. It never gets it's books cleared annually and is still in financial problems. I look forward to saying cheerio to it and meantime plan my third trip to the Netherlands!

Today is a day to divvy up the spoils. With Brexit EU agencies will leave Britain, and 19 European cities are competing to grab European Medicines Agency (EMA) and 8 cities are fighting over the European Banking Authority (EBA).

Politico has an overview of the election procedure, How to watch the Brexit battle for EU agencies like a pro and helpfully comes up with the bookies' odds. Fight! It's the EU agency free-for-all

In case you wondered, and of course you did: My hedged bet for EMA was right, Amsterdam will be the new home of EMA (Milan came second, Copenhagen third), while more surprisingly Paris got EBA (Frankfurt second, Dublin third). While Paris like to present themselves as the new London, I didn't expect them to have this pull. 

Well it doesn't bother me at all as that was "oak" us being in that financial backwater the EU. They can move the offices where they like as we won't be in the damn club.

In case you wondered, and of course you did:

Of course!

Airbus boss says Brexit risks losing UK aviation's 'crown jewels' to China

UK operations chief tells MPs trade barriers and restricted movement for staff will put thousands of jobs in Wales at risk




The Airbus factory in Broughton, North Wales pictured in 2006. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Airbus has told MPs that Britain risks losing the "crown jewels" of its aviation industry to China as a result of Brexit, putting up to 7,000 wing-manufacturing jobs in Wales at risk.

The company's senior corporate representative in the UK warned the business select committee that the threat of new customs bureaucracy and reduced employee mobility could deter long-term investment and accelerate a shift to Asia.

Though there are no current plans to move, Katherine Bennett said, she was "fighting to ensure that wing design - the crown jewels of aerospace - remains in this country".

"I need to let you know, committee, that other countries would dearly love to design and build wings," she told MPs. "Some of them already do; we do build wings in China now, and believe you me they are knocking at the door as a result of the situation we are in in this country.

"Every single thing we export goes into the EU - we don't export anywhere else - so non-tariff barriers are a really big thing for us," added Bennet. "[This is] yet another burden going on my shoulder when I am putting a good case for the UK". (The Guardian)

There has getting more of those warnings lately as companies are starting to panic and negotiations are not pulling up to speed. How many will actually act on those remains to be seen, with the timer set to 493 days left to Brexit, while 515 days have gone since the referendum. 

and meantime plan my third trip to the Netherlands!

Just to remember you that, as a non European member, you'll need to wait in the queue with arabs, africans and others like you in order to enter. I've heard the policemen at Schipool aren't too much gentle with your kind of people.
Enjoy.

Amsterdam will be the new home of EMA

Cities prostitution.
EMA and all the other euro-bureaucrats should be sent to Antarctica, right to the middle of pinguins. Others more radical than me would sent them directly to Auschevitz.

Every single thing we export goes into the EU - we don't export anywhere else...

Didn't somebody recently say something about the Commonwealth? )Eh, RJ?)

@Belfrager: Please start taking your meds again!

Funny to watch an American to say to the founders of Europe to take medicines...
This is really a nice cabaret but I wonder when the naked women will finally appear...

firstly Belfrager. I am not bothered o the queue matter as my country hyas more than done it's bit to subsidise the nations that  could only exist with the begging bowl (know what I mean?!). And to dear OakdaleFTL - I got a laugh with you using the Guardian newspaper which is a leftist bundle of rubbish. You of all people? The Commonwealth is more important to me and millions of others than the damn financial mess that is the EU. 

Just to your info.
Since the Guardian changed ownership it ceased to be what it once was and became the same "bundle of rubbish" as the rest of your and our guided mass media. So far you are almost right.
BTW, those who miss the old Guardian may check Off Guardian.

It is still lefty dear trying hard man. Neither is it's circulation going up either and there are times I wonder if they secretly run the BBC. As for rubbish generally here in GB you should already have some idea of media rubbish over in the ex-colonies. They are so much string pulled by the corporate barons over there and the average Yank is brained under clever propaganda. Time and time again over they years when your people are interviewed on the street by what is happening elsewhere through the news they are lost. All the daft nonsense on Russia pulling election strings is laughable and the way your media waxes on the stuff is laughable. There are aspects in our media I do not like including television and papers both of which do not always report fairly but you have no basis for being smug over there!

Just to your info.
Since the Guardian changed ownership it ceased to be what it once was and became the same "bundle of rubbish" as the rest of your and our guided mass media. So far you are almost right.
BTW, those who miss the old Guardian may check Off Guardian.

The Guardian, while left of centre, isn't so left-wing as to enthusiastically support Jeremy Corbyn.

It is still lefty dear trying hard man.

Whatever "lefty" means to you...
Once Thales, a "lefty" Greek philosoper (I wonder if you ever heard of him), was asked which city is the best: "The one without too rich and too poor people." 

And considering jax that the only main  stream left crowd is the Labour lot run by that Marxist clown says more. Maybe that might register with you. Please take note krake. It IS a leftist paper. originally it was called the Manchester Guardian and published north in that city and came from a Liberal Party kind of tradition. Then changed the name and moved to London but the circulation does not help it much financially and is a continuous anti-Conservative stance.

Brexit broke in the first round.

Theresa May fights to save Brexit deal after DUP backlash

Ministers are facing MPs' questions about the failure to strike a Brexit deal following a DUP backlash.

The DUP, whose support the government needs in key votes, said it would not accept a deal on the Irish border which saw Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK.

And as a staunch Unionist I agree with the DUP.

We have been very good to Southern Ireland and loaned them billions when they had that terrible financial mess. Happy to have a good relationship with that country  on the general Border matter and there has been a close association in both North and South of that geographical line covering produce, transport, power, etc, However Ireland is part of the EU and we are getting out so it is unfortunately Dublin's problem being in that association. Dublin is stuck with that European lot and it does finance them as couldn't do it themselves so at the end of the day them still being in the EU is i am afraid their sad problem.

Days left until Brexit: 478 (today)
Days since referendum: 530 (today)
Days since Article 50 was invoked: 252 (today)

Less than half total time, and less than two thirds Article 50-time, remains. The negotiations have barely started, and already halted. 

These four requirements cannot simultaneously be fulfilled, and the last two are unacceptable to Ireland. If Ireland says no deal, then there is no deal, and the UK becomes a third world country as far as the EU is concerned.

• A border between the UK and the EU
• No border between Northern Ireland and the rest of UK
• No border between NI and Ireland
• No border between Ireland and the rest of EU

(1) is what the Brexiteers went to election on, (2) is a requirement from the DUP, whose support May's current government depends on, and for (3) and (4) Ireland holds the cards. Ireland (pop. 5M) has never been in as good a negotiating position relative to the UK (pop. 66M, of which NI 2M) as they are now, and they probably never will. They are not going to fold easily.

Short of giving N.I. to Ireland, which would break May's coalition, and requirement (2), they would either have to give Ireland what they want, or bribe them enough not to want it so much. THEN they have to bribe the DUP not to make too much of a stink about it. It's a good time to be Irish it seems.

Of course, if Britain sinks into the sea, that's bad for Ireland too, if not as much as for the British. And it would be bad for the EU as well, if not as much as for the Irish. There is a limit to Ireland's negotiation power, but I don't think it has been reached yet.

The economic rational thing to do would be to forego (1), the Norway option. Business would be happy, Ireland would cease to be a negotiation superpower (but for Ireland and N.I that would be a fallback to status quo, which is a pretty good anyway). Many of the remaining unresolved issues would disappear as if they never were.

The Hard Brexiteers would be furious though. It would be waving goodbye to brave new trade deals with India and Kenya. It too would probably be the end of May's government, and Britain would have been demoted from being the top power player at the EU to being a somewhat larger Norway. 

Not doing so, the Ireland negotiations will drag on, leaving less time for the rest and risking EU overtime. In that scenario every single EU country will become an Ireland.

Btw, don't tell the Brits they're using an airplane called Eurofighter. 

The Eurofighter is not a Britishfighter, not even less a Brexytfigther.

and the UK becomes a third world country as far as the EU is concerned.

It is already.