Territorial
EU countries and the European parliament will face off in a complicated vote today to decide the location of the EU’s new customs authority, writes Paola Tamma.
Context: Nine countries have bid to host the new body, which will centralise customs data and strengthen enforcement as part of wider reforms, as the EU tries to curb the flood of small packages coming from China.
The candidate cities are Liège, Zagreb, Lille, Rome, The Hague, Warsaw, Porto, Bucharest and Málaga.
Warsaw and Málaga are seen as the frontrunners. They are backed by the centre-right European People’s Party in parliament. But Lille, backed by France, the liberal Renew group and the European Conservatives and Reformists, is also in contention. Other dark horse candidates could still emerge.
The process to select the host city has been the subject of lengthy negotiations. The European Court of Justice had previously ruled that parliament should have a say, after Italy challenged the opaque relocation of the European Medicines Agency from the UK to the Netherlands.
The institutions devised a complex system whereby they will separately vote on two preferred cities, then reveal their shortlist to each other. If there is a match between the parliament’s and the member states’ preferences, that city will be selected. If there is a double match, the city with the most votes wins.
But if there is no overlap, the four shortlisted cities would undergo successive rounds of voting with different rules. This is meant to avoid “gaming” of the system, said Dirk Gotink, a Dutch centre-right MEP.
“For decades [member states] have controlled all sorts of decisions [on agency allocations] and the ECJ had ruled that the parliament needed to co-decide. This procedure tries to do that. Already that they agreed to it is quite revolutionary,” Gotink said.