So, all you Brit and European folks

[ms.peachy]

and anyone else who has an informed opinion on the issue...

What do we make of all this business about the tension between Blair and the other big EU heavy hitters and these farm subsidy rebates and suchlike?

Just curious.

[synch]

Holland says it pays too much.

UK says it shouldn't get less.

France says it's ridiculous that Holland and UK are being a pain while not giving back a single penny of the huge amounts that they are getting.

Everyone is looking after their own interests and not budging.

The new countries are willing to compromise but the "old" european countries aren't going to back down on the money they think they deserve.

This should end well.

[EN[i]GMA]

The Economist sums it up well:

The European Union budget

About a rebate
Jun 16th 2005
From The Economist print edition


A bluffer's guide to the European summit's squabble over the budget

THE EU summit on June 16th-17th was bound to be fraught, because it followed the French and Dutch referendums that decisively rejected the EU constitution. But France's president, Jacques Chirac, then cleverly changed the subject, by demanding that Britain make a “gesture of solidarity towards Europe”—and give up most of its budget rebate. The summit, which began after The Economist went to press, looks highly unlikely to agree on the budget. But it is worth asking why the rebate suddenly became so contentious.

The EU budget, at just over €100 billion ($120 billion) is quite small (around 1% of EU GDP). But because almost half goes on the common agricultural policy (CAP) and a third on regional aid, it gives rise to widely different net contributions and receipts. In 1979, when it became clear that Britain, which because of its small farming sector gets few CAP receipts, would be the biggest net contributor, Margaret Thatcher asked for Britain's money back. Several bad-tempered summits later, she got it. Ever since, the European Commission has calculated (roughly) the gap between what Britain pays in and what it gets out every year, and handed back a rebate of 66% of that gap, paid a year in arrears.

The chart shows net transfers, before and after the rebate, for the 15 EU members in 2003, as shares of national income, along with each country's CAP receipts. Even after the rebate, Britain is the fourth-biggest net contributor by shares of national income. In cash, it is the second-biggest after Germany. Hence Tony Blair's retort to Mr Chirac, that “Britain has been making a gesture because over the past ten years, even with the British rebate, we have been making a contribution into Europe two and a half times that of France.”

Mr Chirac's real worry is that the rebate is growing, and that France pays disproportionately towards financing it (under a special deal, Germany, Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands pay only one-quarter of their normal share of the rebate's cost). Commission forecasts show that, by 2013, Britain's net contribution might even—quelle horreur!—fall below France's. Britain is exploring with the ten new members how to refund their share of the rebate, a suggestion also made this week by Peter Mandelson, the British commissioner. Yet Mr Blair has a grievance too: that the budget negotiations, which are meant to set spending ceilings from 2007 to 2013, have omitted the biggest item: the CAP.

That is because, in October 2002, Mr Chirac got first Germany's Gerhard Schröder and then other EU leaders to agree to keep CAP spending unchanged until 2013. About a quarter of CAP spending goes to France: that €10 billion-plus every year is worth two and a half times as much as the British rebate. No wonder Mr Chirac, who cut his teeth as a farm minister fighting for the CAP, is so eager to protect what some British officials disdainfully term the “French rebate”. And no wonder Mr Blair will not discuss his own rebate unless the CAP, the main cause of Britain's budgetary burden, is also discussed.

Why has the row broken out now? The EU must agree, unanimously, a budget for 2007-13. Yet it need not do this until early 2006, when the commission draws up a budget for 2007. It is hard not to conclude that Mr Chirac ambushed Mr Blair mainly to divert attention from France's non.

Article from www.economist.com

If you want to read it there you have to either subscribe, or view an add to check out the content. I highly reccomend reading the current issue, it's a fabulous magazine.

[ms.peachy]

thanks Enigma, that is a lot of good backround information. But I generally understand the situation; I am at this point more interested in hearing people's opinions.

[EN[i]GMA]

thanks Enigma, that is a lot of good backround information. But I generally understand the situation; I am at this point more interested in hearing people's opinions.

No real opinion.

Makes little difference in the grand scheme of things.

It's just which EU pays which EU country, it's all a scam.

[Ace42]

My opinion is that if the various EU nations want England (traditionally a side-line player in the EU stakes) to invest greater in it (especially after a double no on the constitution from two of the supposedly most pro nations) then they really need to address major concerns about what the EU stands for. A massive 500 page constitution that is of very little relevance to the people in the street is clearly not the direction the people want to go into.

So, I would say that in the wake of the damaging referenda, the EU nations need to start afresh from first principles, and organise an ideology that all the EU nations are willing to subscribe to, and thus invest in.

Then, I am sure, England would be a lot more willing to invest in its neighbours, and Europe's best interests, rather than investing in the member-states' partisan interests.

I'd like to see the constitution enshrine things that matter - fair trade, common military principles (and even a common military force) and most significantly, stringent and powerful human-rights watch-dogs guaranteed to insure that members cannot "go Blair" and break international law, encroach on civil liberties without fear of sanction.

The EU has the economic and political clout to set a respect benchmarks for global politics, but it needs to be a *European Union* rather than a "European Economic Community plus"

[Ali]

I think that the UK should decide whether it wants to be a part of the EU or a part of the US. Or go it alone, like Swizzerland and Norway. The Poms can't keep milling about on the sidelines, 'sort of' being European but despising everything 'Continental' at the same time - picking and choosing instead of going the Whole Hog. This Rebate Debate is an example of this wishy-washy, hoity-toity, sundried tomatoe-eating British refusal to get involved in Europe, without being left out.

It's also another excuse for the French and the English to have a go at one another. This sort of thing goes back to Waterloo and before. They simply cannot wait to stab one another in the back, yet they know that they need each other to prosper. This will go on for as long as the French continue to eat garlic and the English to boil everything they eat. C'est la vie, c'est la mérde!

[guerillaGardner]

I think the whole thing is bullshit. I'd preferred a more devolved than a more united Europe with any kind of union between nations a cultural, educational and spiritual one rather than economic.

My reasons for this are probably more Zapatista/Green than jingoistic

I think the world's economic system is unsustainable, wasteful and fairly immoral so I don't see the benefit of the European Union as it stands.

I feel also that I should point out that the quarrel is between the UK (not just England) and France, though why I should want to implicate Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in this crap I don't know :D