Swedish region supports rival EMA bid

The Skåne regional government in southern Sweden has said that it is supporting Denmark’s bid to host the European Medicines Agency.

Henrik Fritzon, chairman of the regional government, told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on 8 December that he would have wanted the EMA to be relocated to the Malmö-Lund region in southern Sweden. However, after health minister Gabriel Wikström announced that Sweden would launch a bid to host the EU drug regulator in the capital area, Fritzon said that he was instead supporting the Danish bid.

“There is no doubt that for us, it is more rewarding to have the EMA in Copenhagen than in Stockholm,” he said. He added that he hoped the Danish and the Swedish governments would launch a common bid instead of competing with each other.