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Letter to The Yorkshire Post : Contributions and rebates to the European Union : December 2005
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Dear Sir
A number of your correspondents have begged for some hard facts on the matter of our contributions and rebates to the European Union. At this time of festive cheer and parties I appreciate how dry and unappealing this subject is. Perhaps your readers would like to cut out this briefing and read it later in the New Year when, traditionally, budgets are looked at by even the smallest family or business.
What is the current value of the UK rebate? €5.3 billion on the most recent, official figures (for 2004). It is projected to rise slightly to €5.6 billion this year. The Commission says the figure will rise to €7.7 billion a year on average between 2007-20013 if there is no change to the current mechanism. The Luxembourg EU Presidency proposed freezing the rebate at this year’s projected figure of €5.6 billion for 2007, before eventually scaling it down.
The UK contributed just under €17 billion to the EU in 2004 (before the rebate), second only to Germany, which has a much larger population.
What is the UK’s projected future payments into the EU? The European Commission has set out the projected year-on-year increases in the EU budget for the period of the next Financial Perspective, 2007-2013. Even on the large assumption that the modest annual reductions proposed by the UK presidency are accepted, the EU budget will still have grown by around 33% by 2013. On that basis, one can safely project that, by that time, the UK’s annual payment to Brussels will be in excess of €22.5 billion before the calculation of any rebate.
Already, only Germany, with €14,838.3 million (2004 figures), contributes more in GNI-based Own Resources than the UK (€12,026.2 million in 2004, France contributed €11,150 million), yet our Government is proposing we pay even more. Yet no one even knows where it goes. Eleven years unaudited! Our taxes rise as our public services decline.
There is no agreement for reform. The intransigence of the French has stalled the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong. Fatal for us as a global trading power.
The economic and demographic decline with the EU along with chronic unemployment shows it is now terminal not cyclical. It is unreformable. We must leave and leave soon before the whole Byzantine shambles collapses around our ears.
Yours faithfully
Godfrey Bloom
UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire
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