The EU’s demand for an extra
€2.1 billion
Last Friday’s announcement that
the EU wants an extra €2.1 billion from the UK was presented in shock horror
terms, as if sudden demands for more money were new. In fact, the EU has played
this game a few times already. As I explained on pp. 13 – 18 of the 2014 issue
of How much does the European Union
cost Britain?,
in the last two years the EU seems to have lost control of its own expenditure
and then bounced its member states into paying for major cost overruns. Already
in 2012/13 the UK’s net contribution to the EU Budget was £2.7 billion more than
originally planned. The newspapers are giving the
impression that Prime Minister Cameron is aghast at the EU’s pressure for more
money and that he will resist it. In fact, he has conceded that, while the UK
will not pay up on 1st December (as the Commission
would like), it will pay up in due course as long as the figure is rounded down
by a few hundred millions. This is pathetic and deceitful, but should not be a
surprise. Cameron has been consistently pathetic and deceitful in his handling
of EU issues since he became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005. Like
Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, he does not understand that appeasing
playground bullies only encourages the playground bullies to try
again.
The correct response was of course to tell the EU ‘no, we refuse to pay, full stop’. Cameron has not done that. As before, he needs to be reminded that he has lied in his claims to have cut the EU Budget. The truth is that the UK’s net contribution to the EU Budget has more than doubled since 2009, the last full year before Cameron became Prime Minister. Indeed, I would not rule out that in 2015 the net cost will be treble its 2009 level.
The correct response was of course to tell the EU ‘no, we refuse to pay, full stop’. Cameron has not done that. As before, he needs to be reminded that he has lied in his claims to have cut the EU Budget. The truth is that the UK’s net contribution to the EU Budget has more than doubled since 2009, the last full year before Cameron became Prime Minister. Indeed, I would not rule out that in 2015 the net cost will be treble its 2009 level.
(The 2014 Pink Book, the annual publication from
the Office for National Statistics on the UK’s balance of payments, is due out
this Friday, 31st October, and the page on the EU
will attract more comment than usual. Watch out also for the 2014 European Finances
White Paper,
written at the Treasury, presumably to be published next month a year after the
last one [Cmnd. 8740]. It will be nice if the ONS and HMT arrive at more or less
the same numbers.)
