Blair confirms no EU rebate cut without reform
Tony Blair has insisted Britain will not give up its EU rebate without corresponding reforms to agricultural subsidies.
CBI director general Digby Jones asked the prime minister to give an assurance that negotiations over the EU budget for 2007-13 would not see Britain give up the £3.5 billion rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher without more general reform.
During a question and answer session at the CBI conference in London, Mr Blair gave this assurance, saying that the reasons for the rebate still remained as long as other EU member states benefited from the common agricultural policy (Cap) where Britain did not.
“The rebate is there for a reason. It’s there because of the distortions of expenditure under the common agricultural policy,” he told business leaders.
“If we didn’t get the rebate then we would be even larger contributors than we are already. Britain, even with the rebate, has been a big net contributor to the EU.”
Reports suggest that Britain is considering giving up part of the rebate, secured in 1984, in return for a cap on overall EU spending.
The government has said it is determined to secure agreement on the budget in its presidency of the union, which ends at the end of this year, but talks are currently in deadlock, primarily over the rebate and the reform of the Cap.
This week Mr Blair is visiting a number of the new member states to try to establish a “consensus” on the EU budget. These nations are particularly keen for agreement to be reached on future financing, as they have been promised regeneration funds.
The government is due to put forward detailed proposals on its reform plans ahead of the EU summit on December 15th and 16th. Failure to agree the budget would result in the current arrangements rolling over.
Mr Blair today said he “totally understood” the needs of the eastern European accession states, who argue that they should not be paying for Britain – one of the EU’s richest countries.
But a deal could only be secured by a total reform of the EU budget, he insisted.
A deal put forward by the Luxembourg presidency earlier this year would have frozen the British rebate at its current rate, but the government rejected this on the basis that it would cost too much and brought with it no guaranteed changes to agricultural subsidies.
