The UB holds a ceremony in support of Barcelona's candidacy to be the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency
The Paranimph of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona gathered more than 300 people who participated in the support ceremony for the initiative of the Spanish Government, Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) and the Barcelona City Council so that the European Medicines Agency moves to Barcelona when leaving the current head office, in London, due the situation of Brexit.
The Paranimph of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona gathered more than 300 people who participated in the support ceremony for the initiative of the Spanish Government, Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) and the Barcelona City Council so that the European Medicines Agency moves to Barcelona when leaving the current head office, in London, due the situation of Brexit.
During the event, chaired by the journalist Cristina Puig, the actor Josep Maria Pou read the text of the manifesto, which starts putting emphasis on “Barcelona wants to be the new headquarters of the European Medicines Agency”. After reading the text, Pou gave the original manuscript with the first signatures in support of the candidacy of Barcelona, to Dolors Montserrat, minister of Health, Social Services and Equality, who attended the event with the minister of Health of Generalitat, Antoni Comín, and the second deputy mayor for Business, Culture and Innovation of the Barcelona City Council, Jaume Collboni, who gave firm support to this initiative from the very beginning.
The rector of the UB, Joan Elias, who opened the ceremony, highlighted the importance of the political, economic, academic and social representation of the country, brought together on this day, and stated Barcelona is the best candidate to hold EMA: “It is a difficult challenge but the city deserves this project”. “Universities -he continued- are first-level social actors and the UB, which has the only Faculty of Pharmacy in Catalonia, is an active agent committed to the city and the country”. “We want to collaborate with everything so that Barcelona can hold the agency”, he said.
Scientific capacity and necessary infrastructure
Apart from reading the manifesto, six civil society representatives took part in a colloquium on EMA and Barcelona: Gonzalo Rodés, president of Barcelona Global; the doctor Joan Massagué, director of Sloan Kettering Institute of New York and president of the International Scientific Committee of the Institute for Research on Biomedicine (IRB); the researcher Bonaventura Clotet, director of the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute and head of the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Germans Trias Hospital in Badalona; Jordi Ramentol, chief executive of Ferrer and vice-president of Farmaindustria; Margarita Arboix, rector of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Maria Jaureguízar, managing director of Vet+i Foundation. When asked by Cristina Puig, they were convinced that Barcelona is ready to hold EMA. All of them agreed in the fact that the city gathers the scientific capacity and necessary infrastructures for the transfer to be a success.