Tag: UK rebate

Leading Conservatives in the UK have challenged the government to justify the £6.4 billion net contribution the British exchequer will make to the EU coffers next year - a 60% rise on this year.

Having threatened to block the EU budget deal, the Parliament now warns that tough negotiations lie ahead.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is the 'woman in the middle'. She backs Blair in principle but does not want to jeopardise ties with France and must avoid Germany ending up footing the EU bill once again.

After fierce criticism from a majority of his EU colleagues UK foreign secretary Jack Straw has pledged to revise the UK proposal for the EU's long term budget.

The cold reception in new member states to the UK's idea of cutting structural funds at their expense has led the UK to put its rebate into play at the EU budget talks. 

Realising that the CAP spending will be hard to touch, the UK is set to make cuts in structural fund payments in its EU budget proposal. 

The UK has failed to put a concrete blueprint for the future EU budget on the table. EU foreign ministers are blaming the UK Presidency for its lack of pro-activity.   

In what may turn out to be a last-ditch effort to embellish the British Presidency's record, the UK has announced plans to re-start, on 7 November 2005, the talks on the EU's 2007-2013 financial perspective.

The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) is a shrinking sector that hardly makes any contribution to EU wealth, is blocking the redistribution of the budget to more pressing needs and is thwarting any agreement on the UK rebate, says an analyst from the Centre for European Policy Studies.

The UK presidency made an 864 billion euro deal at the EU summit in  December 2005, which Parliament then managed to top up with an extra 4 billion euros on 4 April. This political agreement is set to get a final green light on 17 May.      The overall budget deal, reached in the early hours of 17 December, raised the 2007-2013 budget to 862.3 billion euros, or 1.045 percent of EU Gross National Income. Compared to the Luxembourg June 2005 compromise it is still a decrease of 22 billion euros.

During the European Council on 16-17 June 2005, EU leaders had failed to reach an agreement.  A row between Britain and France over the UK's yearly budget rebate were among the major stumbling blocks as was the size of the payments of other net-contributing countries to the EU budget.

The UK is taking over the EU presidency at a time of political upheaval. With the high-profile clash over the EU budget still smouldering PM Tony Blair will have a hard time posing as the 'honest broker'. 

French President Jacques Chirac is blaming UK PM Tony Blair for the summit failure. The UK Presidency will now try to pick up the pieces.