EU threat to UK subsidies if Blair will not compromise
June 12, 2005 by Ken
Filed under The Best of the Rest
What price a veto, Our government do like to keep reassuring us all that we need not be concerned about further EU integration because they hold a veto, they have lines they will not cross, lines that used to be drawn in the sand, but sand is such a pliable element that recently Blair has changed those lines to solid red ones, we have not been informed where they are drawn.
But it would appear that even if we do have a few veto’s the EU system will hit back if we decide to use one of them.
Scotland On Sunday is the only place I have seen this:
TONY Blair has been warned that some of the poorest people in Britain could pay the price for his refusal to back down over the UK’s multi-billion pound annual rebate from the European Union.
Britain’s European partners have told the government that they would target the amount of EU aid channelled towards the poorest regions of the country – some of them in Scotland – if they cannot claw back extra cash from the £3.4bn refund paid to the UK every year.
The remarkable warning was given by officials from Luxembourg, currently holder of the union presidency, in the run-up to this week’s EU summit which promises to be the most bitter gathering of European leaders for several years.
Preparations for the summit have been dominated by concerted attacks on the UK rebate, which a number of EU states want to see frozen and ultimately phased out, in a bid to balance the budget and free extra cash to aid modernisation programmes in the union’s 10 new member states.
Blair has resisted the pressure on the rebate, chiselled out by Margaret Thatcher over 20 years ago, but insisted that any compromise would only be accepted if it were part of a “fundamental debate” on the EU’s entire budget.
Scotland on Sunday understands that Blair will make an overhaul of the EU funding settlement – particularly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), criticised for favouring French farmers – the centrepiece of Britain’s own presidency of the EU, which begins next month.
But British officials last night confirmed that he has already been warned that the EU would consider cutting the UK’s share of regional subsidies if he did not back down.
“The issue of subsidies has been raised during the preliminary talks about the summit,” one said last night. “We are not sure which categories of aid they are talking about, and we are not certain that they can just go ahead and reduce any allocations like that, but we would resist any further unfairness in the UK’s share of EU finances.”
“The EU could, for example, decide to review the system of regional subsidies which benefits in a big way most northern regions as well as Scotland and Wales. The new system, aimed at reducing expenses, could mean that these regions receive virtually nothing if the rebate is not renegotiated, and that all the money from the structural funds could be channelled towards the new member states instead.”
