Fewer immigrants after Brexit, but also PhDs
Britain has thrown its future into disarray, and the UK is likely to lose its leadership role in many fields
The populist wave that pulled Britain from the European Union could have been a reaction to perceived forced immigration and overregulation by the European bloc, but it isn’t only asylum seekers who will be absent from the UK once the split is final.
A host of professionals including scientists, professors, doctors and experts in high finance will be forced to move or choose to relocate as Britain loses the preferential status afforded to EU member states. As well, some top-level agencies will vacate London for other EU cities as funding and work permits are withdrawn.
Among the high-value organisations up for grabs is the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Today, some 19 cities are vying to become the new home for the 900 medical staff and administration personnel who work there.
Founded in London in 1995 after full seven years of negotiation, the agency is in an effort to harmonise existing national medicine regulatory bodies. It evaluates new pharmaceuticals for both human and animal safety.
The EU’s remaining 27 member states will vote in November on where the EMA will be headquartered. The cities with their eye on the prize are Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Bonn, Bratislava, Brussels, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Lille, Malta, Milan, Porto, Sofia, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw, and Zagreb.
Another London-based agency coveted by European cities is the European Banking Authority (EBA) founded in 2011 to supervise stability and transparency in the continent’s banks. It actually has the authority to override member-state banking regulators.
The German financial centre of Frankfurt is the clear frontrunner for the EBA, followed by Paris, Luxembourg and Prague. But like so many aspects of Brexit, the true impact on banking is nearly impossible to predict with any certainty.
Jeffrey Greenbaum, attorney at Hogan Lovells in Rome, a law firm focused on Brexit, says “there may be a leveling of the playing field among financial centres in Europe, but I would still expect London to remain the largest and most important”.
“Dublin, Luxumbourg, Frankfurt and maybe Paris would likely be relatively more important,” he says.
Yet banks themselves are already making their moves. Among financial institutions, Goldman Sachs was the
Across UK universities, non-UK EU citizens make up about 17 per cent of the more than 200,000 academic staff, according to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency. Science departments in the UK are even more international.
first to announce it was moving staff away from the UK. Last February it decided to close some of its hedge fund operations in London and move them to New York. Barclays Bank has chosen the Irish capital Dublin as its post-Brexit European hub.
Deutsche Bank could move 4,000 jobs out of the UK, nearly half of its UK workforce. And even Lloyd’s of London announced it would be seeking a new Brussels-based subsidiary.
Lloyd’s of Brussels just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
And in land that gave birth to Isaac Newtown and Charles Darwin, scientists could be the most upset. They like reliable predictions.
Siegfried Bethke, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and a member of the European Physical Society council, sees Brexit as “a human and social tragedy, and it will have a bad influence in all areas of normal life, especially in the UK.” He expects that negotiations over UK participation in EU science programmes “will take years”.
Simon Morris, chair of physics at Durham University, told Physics Today magazine that “we exchange postdocs and graduate students all the time. It’s delightfully easy. With Brexit, we’ve just given all of that away”.
Advanced education could in fact feel the biggest impact. Across UK universities, non-UK EU citizens make up about 17 per cent of the more than 200,000 academic staff, according to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency. Science departments in the UK are even more international. In physics, 27 per cent of faculty and staff are from EU countries and another 18 per cent come from outside the EU.
A survey of 2,000 EU workers in Britain by global advisory firm KPMG found that 55 per cent of professionals with PhDs and 49 per cent of those with postgraduate degrees were either planning to go or were actively considering leaving the UK.
Consulting firm KPMG estimates that 3.1 per cent of the national workforce, about a million people, now see their future in Britain as over. The main reasons given were that they felt “less welcome and valued” postBrexit, that the UK “is no longer the place that attracted them” and that they are “pro-European and disagree with Brexit”.
The same survey reveals a decline in applications from EU students and professors to UK universities.
Before the second-largest economy in the EU, Britain has certainly thrown its future into disarray. Like the breakup of its former empire, Brexit could mean the UK will lose its leadership role in many fields, at least in the midterm future. The long-term outcome will be up to history to decide.
Jon Van Housen and Mariella Radaelli are editors at the Luminosity
Italy news agency in Milan