Blair: We will stand firm on rebate
The row over the UK’s rebate from the EU seems to be turning increasingly bitter, with Britain appearing isolated.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is in Luxembourg for talks on the EU’s budget for 2007-2013, with the UK’s rebate increasingly the focus, and other countries lining up to criticise the rebate.
But speaking as part of his diplomatic tour, Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “I will be, as is my way, diplomatic but firm.
“The context for this discussion is one in which two countries have now voted against the European constitution.
“Why? Because people in Europe did not feel that sufficient attention was being paid to their concerns about Europe and its future.
“When we come to debate the future financing of the European Union, let us bear that in mind. We can’t discuss the British rebate unless we discuss the whole of the financing of the EU, including that 40 per cent of the budget goes on agriculture which employs only five per cent of the people.”
The UK has repeatedly insisted that the rebate – worth around £3 billion a year – is not open for negotiation, unless there is fundamental reform of the Common Agriculture Policy.
Even with the rebate, the UK is the EU’s second biggest net contributor.
Speaking before the meeting Mr Straw said that none of Europe’s “fundamental problems” would be addressed by abandoning the rebate.
The Foreign Secretary argued: “The rebate is simply a symptom of a fundamentally distorted budgetary system which continues to give the UK the lowest per capita receipts of any country.”
He urged his counterparts to look instead at the wider budget – which the UK wants capped at one per cent of the EU’s GDP, saying: “This is a test… because the proposed budget is not fit for purpose. It will fail to deliver the jobs and economic growth needed in Europe.
“It is as wasteful as it is unfair – unfair to poorer European countries because far too much of the proposed spending on regional funds goes to better-off countries, and unfair to poorer countries in the rest of the world.”
Mr Straw has indicated that Britain would be prepared to veto the entire budget to preserve the rebate.
But Britain appears increasingly isolated with the French and the Germans piling on the pressure.
Last night the French representative Catherine Colonna said that: “The reduction of this rebate and then its progressive disappearance is a necessity.”
She added: “The British have a point of view, but it is one thing to express a point of view. Everyone has that right. It is a completely different thing to justify it. The British position on the rebate defies EU logic and undermines EU solidarity”.
Mr Blair is set for talks with French president Jacques Chirac later today. In a sign of the ongoing tension between the two countries, there is to be no post-meeting joint press conference.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said that it was important that the UK stood firm.
Sir Menzies, said: “What ever the pressure this week this is no time for the Government to blink.
“It was never a condition of enlargement that the British rebate should be abolished or reduced.”
He added: “Only a wholesale review of European Union finances and an end to the profligate Common Agricultural Policy would justify a British concession.”
