EU Squeezes UK For Cash
EURSOC Two
08 July, 2004
Someone in Brussels must want to make life really difficult for Tony Blair. Not only does the Prime Minister face an uphill struggle to convince Britons to sign up for the European Constitution, but according to reports today, he will have to do so while Britain loses its rebate and becomes Europe's largest net contributor of funds.
These extraordinary proposals are aired in a plan produced by the EU Budget Commissioner, Michaele Schreyer.
Eurocrats have been greedily eyeing Britain's £2 billion annual rebate for years. The rebate was won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, when Britain was last Europe's biggest net contributor. Blair is thought to find the rebate difficult to defend politically, not least because it eats into cash which could go to Britain's less well-off allies in central Europe. It is thought that the PM would be open to proposals to reduce or remove the rebate, provided a wider revision of EU budgetary policy was undertaken. In any case, government spokesmen defend the rebate because Britain gets little back from the EU: Other nations, with larger agricultural sectors, do better via Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.
However, some insiders claim that rather than use the rebate to help poor central Europeans, Britain's loot would be divided among other wealthy contributing nations in western Europe.
Not content from stealing from the rich to give to the rich, the report proposes doubling Britain's contribution to the EU. The Independent says this would bring Britain's contribution of Gross Nation Income up from 0.22 to 0.51 percent.
British EU insiders reacted angrily: UK commissioners Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten are pleading with Schreyer to rethink her proposals. Patten said, "It is such a self-evidently unfair proposal that it is politically naive. Doubling the UK's contribution is not a sensible option."
The report makes Tony Blair's job of selling Europe to Britain even more difficult. Canny Eurosceptics are surely already working on an "EU tax" which would demonstrate how much British taxpayers would bankroll the EU under the proposals.
Commentators never seem to tire of telling Britons how much better continental Europe's welfare system is than our own. When a tenth, a quarter or a third (whichever figure is currently fashionable) of British children are said to grow up in relative poverty, it will be impossible to justify paying another £10 billion a year to Brussels.
Britons will wonder why the UK, with a similar population and economy only slighter larger than France's, will have to pay so much more: France stitched up Common Agricultural Policy funds last year, ensuring it retains the lion's share of this corrupt subsidy system for years to come. Under the proposals, Britain would pay 50 percent more than France.
Voters might be persuaded at a stretch to fork out cash to help Britain's allies in central Europe. But to fund France's farmers and Brussels' swollen and unaccountable bureaucracy? To help line the pockets of bent MEPs and prop up endless cash-hungry committees? Not a chance.
EU commission president Romano Prodi has a handy catchphrase for the new drive for funds. He says that "You cannot have more Europe for less money."
Britons - and we suspect, most other Europeans - have a ready answer for that. If less money means less Europe, well, voters will take less Europe.
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