BRUSSELS, Jan 30 — When Britain leaves the European Union at midnight tomorrow the bloc loses the second-biggest net contributor to its budget, leaving a €12-billion (RM53.1 billion) hole in its finances. The United Kingdom will continue making budget contributions this year under an agreed...
British and EU flags flutter outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain January 30, 2019. — Reuters pic
This further complicates an already fraught debate between the remaining member states over the EU’s 2021-2027 long-term budget, called the Multiannual Financial Framework . And a rival “Friends of Cohesion” group of 16 eastern and Mediterranean countries wants to defend the budget rules. The previous finance commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, wanted to fill the gap by increasing member state contributions and cutting traditional big spends: cohesion and farm subsidies.
“We might have hoped that Brexit would be a shock to the system, but I think we’ll just go on as before,” laments Nicolas-Jean Brehon, of the Robert Schuman Foundation. Another Commission idea is phasing out the “rebates” that late British premier Margaret Thatcher famously demanded, taken up by some of the other bigger spenders.
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