I don't believe there's anything confidential here so here's what Iain Mattaj, EMBL Director, told us back in February

The United Kingdom (UK) will hold a referendum on its continued membership of the European Union (EU) on 23 June. In light of questions that have come to my attention about the potential impact the results of this referendum could have on EMBL I think it is worth outlining the facts.

A UK vote to leave the EU would have no direct consequences for the UK’s membership of EMBL. Consequently there would be no direct impact on EMBL as a whole or on EMBL-EBI in particular.

EMBL is an intergovernmental organisation and is not formally linked to the European Union; a country’s membership of EMBL is independent of its membership of the EU. EMBL was established by international treaty between its 21 member states, not all of which are members of the EU. For example, Israel and Switzerland, both founding members of EMBL, are not part of the EU. Conversely, some EU members are currently not EMBL member states.

EMBL recruits globally to find the brightest minds. All member state and non-member state citizens can work for EMBL across its sites and this would not change in the case that the UK should decide to leave the EU, thanks to the host-site agreements in place with all of EMBL’s host countries.

The UK has been a member of EMBL since its foundation in 1974. Over the years EMBL has maintained an extremely fruitful and mutually beneficial relationship with the UK, its political representatives and its scientific community. In the past few years this has become particularly apparent through the major investments the UK government and charities such as the Wellcome Trust have made to support and advance EMBL-EBI and the development of its campus. There are no indications at all that the UK is considering to terminate its membership in EMBL or change anything regarding its commitment as the host country of EMBL-EBI.

Let me also take the opportunity to mention that EMBL has worked closely together with the EU for many years in a variety of ways to promote the life sciences in Europe. Both organisations are committed to the promotion of international scientific cooperation and I confidently expect that our relationship will remain both close and constructive in the future.

A victory of emotion and ressentiment over reason, a dark day for Europe and Britain, a dark day for European Science in general. As acceptable as the democratic decision to commit suicide. EBI should relocate. Blacking out now.

Blog post from Ewan Birney, joint director of the EBI, on the matter.

The main effects I can see are on staff choices about working here or not and on grants. This applies not just to us at the EBI, but every scientific institute in the UK who employ large numbers of international scientists.

We're damned good at getting visas for people, so even if immigration is restricted I can see that we would not have any trouble bringing people into the country, even with an Australia-style points system as is being proposed by the Leave campaign (our employees would get millions of points so that would be no worry). Perhaps we might have to wait a few weeks for visas to come through, but that would really have no impact.

However, I can see that people might question whether they would want to work here if we're outside the EU. Certainly, non-British colleagues have expressed discomfort at some of the rhetoric from the Leave campaign regarding immigration – some of it is pretty nasty and a vote Leave would prove that was the majority opinion.

There are also massive concerns about scientific grants. A lot of projects in the EBI and other institutes have EU-specific grants, which we would lose. I don't believe that we would anywhere near make up the shortfall from the piddling amount of money we would save by not paying into the EU.

Just to confuse everybody outside our mad little islands. Great Britain ≠ UK. I know the campaign is called "Brexit" but it is actually a vote about the United Kingdom in the EU, not Great Britain. Video here.

As already mentioned, I believe the main effect will be on funding but mostly for UK labs and institutions. My feeling is that current EU contracts will be allowed to expire but participation in new projects from UK organizations would be either as "third country participant" (in EU speak) or by signing a special agreement to participate in H2020 (like Switzerland). EMBL, as an intergovernmental organization would not be affected because it signs its own agreements with the European Commission (e.g. here).

The EBI itself is part of the EMBL with the headquarter in Germany, so nothing would change directly - this is also the reason why the EBI would NOT lose EU specific grants as I do understand from the posted email. However, I do believe there would be strong indirect consequences - namely EU funded project that involves other UK based companies/universities because they would not be part of EU funded projects no more. Therefore I think the email above is to a certain extend naive - or as Michael described it: " this statement contain an amount of diplomacy and it appears more like a tranquillizer to me." I agree with that.

Further I might add, of course nobody knows exactly what the consequences of a 'Brexit' would be, in general for the UK - and so also not for research. While the EBI is a little bit protected by it's special status, I am sure it would have sever consequences for many (all?) other research companies/universities/institutes.