The FT is reporting the news that the UK has conceded some more of the rebate (effectively) to broker a budget agreement. Well, good. The EU has always been more of a self-support club than a simple single market, with richer members helping poorer members in order to avoid poverty, suffering and little things like wars in Europe (which always turn out well, don’t they?).
The idea that we, the fifth largest economy in the world, should be sucking money out of little countries like Poland was frankly disgusting and I’m glad that we’ve at least reduced the rebate.
The other good news is the French have at least agreed to reconsider CAP spending, previously locked at agreed levels until 2013. Currently, 40% of the EU’s budget goes towards CAP and as the current negotiations at the WTO show, the rest of the world doesn’t like that. While the French have their own reasons for wanting CAP to remain, not all of them bad, and most of the UK’s CAP subsidies goes on environmental conservation, rather than grain mountains, it’s still an idea that needs to be slowly squashed out of existing – or at least substantially reformed.