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Britain bankrolling the EU
Britain may have overtaken Germany to become the biggest net contributor to the EU, the Treasury has admitted. The news comes as the Chancellor prepares for a meeting with his fellow EU finance ministers on Wednesday and Thursday this week, where he is expected to have a serious row. Mr Brown believes that Britain is effectively bankrolling the EU, a situation compounded by its lax accounting system.According to the Treasury's Red Book, there was a surprise increase of £1.7billion in Britain's payments to EU in the past few months, taking our total net contribution to the EU to £4.3billion. Figures for Germany's contribution have yet to be published, but a Treasury spokesman said that if it were the same as the £4.1billion last year, "the UK's net contribution would be greater than Germany's if the £1.7billion were added". More detailed figures will not be published until next month. But, in the meantime, the rise in the cost of Britain's membership of the EU threatens to have serious political ramifications. The Treasury is already forecasting a near doubling to £5.1billion in our net contributions by 2008 and any further increase could add to the fiscal deficit and fuel Tory claims that tax rises are inevitable if Labour wins a third term. Thanks for that, Tony. At least we don't have to worry about how our taxes are wasted when you simply pass the money to other countries... This week, EU finance ministers hope to hammer out the EU's budget. The Commission wants a big increase in order to pay for enlargement and the Chancellor faces a fierce fight to retain Britain's rebate, worth £3.6billion last year. The rebate was granted in 1984 when Britain was one of the poorer countries in the EU, but it is now one of the richest. Stephen Timms, one of the Chancellor's junior ministers, said last week the rebate is "not negotiable and fully justified." He also released a table in a Parliamentary answer, showing Britain gets less out of the EU than any other nation, a situation he described as "unfair". The Government is committed to holding a referendum on the EU Constitution. The escalating net cost of membership is likely to be a serious setback for Tony Blair as he campaigns for a Yes vote. Although public opinion in the UK is fairly Eurosceptic in general, not enough people regard the EU issue as sufficiently serious to have their General Election voting significantly swayed by it. They prefer to vote on closer-to-home stuff, failing to appreciate that a whole lot of provincial issues could be transformed by our throwing off the bureaucratic shackles of EU membership and stopping allowing ourselves to be the cash cow for less productive, less competitive nations. So rampant EUrophiles and instinctive wealth-redistributionists like Blair are allowed to sell the country down the river while reassuring voters by throwing the money he isn't sending overseas at the anachronism that is the NHS; and opposition politicians lack the motivation to get up and do something radical and long overdue - i.e. unplug the umbilical before we're sucked dry. The Treasury hopes the sudden rise in Britain's net contributions is temporary, has been caused by a delay in payments from the EU's structural funds and will be clawed back in future years. But a contributory factor is Britain's terms of membership. Three quarters of all the UK's customs revenue goes to Brussels, and as Britain has some of the biggest entry points to the EU, such as Heathrow airport, payments are escalating. Mr Brown is also angry at the chaos in the EU's accounts, which have not been signed off by the auditors for 10 years in a row. As a result, nobody is certain how much Britain is contributing to the EU. The Office for National Statistics said it was £3.3billion in 2003, £300m lower than the Treasury; and the EU itself says in its accounts Britain contributed £1.8billion that year. Posted by: Bulldog 2005-03-21 |
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