EU agrees how to spend UK money next year, without the UK Chancelllor

The UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer wasn’t even there

Brexit Facts4EU.Org reveals what you will be paying for

Yesterday the EU’s budget for next year (2020) was announced in Brussels by the German EU Commissioner responsible for EU spending. It comes in at a cool €169 billion euros (approx £144 billion GBP).

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

EU budget for next year – some highlights

Total EU budget for 2020: €168.9 billion (£144 billion pounds)
Even if the UK ‘leaves the EU’ on 31 Jan, it will keep paying for the EU’s plans for all of 2020
35% (€58.7 billion) will go to subsidising other EU countries
34% (€58.1 billion) will go to subsidising EU farmers

This is hugely relevant to Brexit

The UK was supposed to have left the EU on 29 March last year. Under the current Government’s plans, the UK will now “leave the EU” on 31 Jan 2020. Despite this, the EU will continue to extract full contributions from the UK. Here is what they said yesterday:-

EU confirmation that the UK will keep paying

“The agreement is based on the premise that the United Kingdom, following its withdrawal from the European Union by 31 January 2020 at the latest, will continue to contribute to and participate in the implementation of the EU budget until the end of 2020 as if it were a Member State.”

- Statement by the EU Commission, Brussels, 18 Nov 2019

So the UK will not be a member of the EU after January, and will not be able to vote on anything at all, but is expected to continue to make massive contributions into the EU’s coffers as if it were a member.

What actually happened yesterday?

In Brussels the three main EU institutions (EU Council, EU Commission, and EU Parliament) finally agreed on the EU's budget for 2020. This was the EU’s top news item.

The EU says that this budget :

“will allow the EU to focus its resources on the priorities that matter to citizens:

climate change,
jobs,
young people,
security and solidarity in the EU.”

Pic right - ©: EU Commission : EU's German Budget Commissioner Herr Oettinger

How is your money being spent by the EU next year?

Next year's budget is the seventh and last one under the current 2014-2020 long-term budgetary cycle, and was announced by Günther H. Oettinger, the German EU Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources.

The total 2020 EU budget is set at €168.69 billion. This does NOT even include the EU’s massive “off-budget” funds to which the UK contributes.

Some key features include:

21% (35.4 billion) of the overall budget will go on climate change
35% (€58.7 billion) will go to subsidising other EU countries. The EU refers to this as “narrowing economic gaps in and between Member States”
34% (€58.1 billion) will go to EU farmers. Agriculture represents 0.5% of the UK economy (DEFRA)
The European global satellite navigation system Galileo will get an extra €1.2 billion. This is the system part-paid for by UK taxpayers to which the EU will not give the UK access under the Withdrawal Agreement
Over €¼ billion will be spent on EU defence projects which the UK will not be part of
€2.9 billion will go to the EU’s Erasmus+ higher education programme. Only 0.5% of British students use it
€2.4 billion will go to the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, the Internal Security Fund, and agencies

Observations

Apparently the UK funding the EU budget is not a news item

Yesterday and today the BBC has not seen fit to mention that the EU has decided how to spend €169 billion of UK and EU27 citizens’ money next year, so Brexit Facts4EU.Org is once again doing the BBC’s job for them. This is highly relevant for British people because the UK is one of the few EU countries which pays in far more than it gets out.

Our readers are very well-informed. Most of what you have read above will not come as a surprise. Sadly this is not the case for many British people. Perhaps it is to be expected that three-and-a-half years after the EU Referendum, many Britons have had enough and are ‘tuning out’.

We continue to believe that it is essential to get basic messages out. It is our assessment that large swathes of voters simply do not realise that ‘getting Brexit done’ by 31 Jan means nothing of the kind. There will be no trade deal, and no sense of anything being “done”.

Instead we will continue to pay into the EU, big-time, and will have agreed a massive divorce bill which has no basis in law. We will be subject to every existing and new law and regulation from the EU. The only difference will be that the UK will no longer have any say over any of this. For the duration of the ‘Transition Period’ we will be, in effect, a submissive colony of the EU.

Going forward there is a job of work to be done. We sincerely hope that if Mr Johnson’s government wins a mandate, they will assemble the finest and most experienced minds to negotiate hard with the EU.

Please, please donate now, if you are one of the many thousands of our readers who haven’t already done so. Our work reaches a great number of ordinary voters and is trusted by MPs, MEPs, and key influencers. We must keep going for a little while longer, somehow. Quick and secure donation methods are below this article. Thank you.

[ Sources: EU Commission | Eurostat (official EU statistics agency) | UK Office for National Statistics | Universities UK | DEFRA ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, 19 Nov 2019

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Reader Comments 10

1. Sydney Ashurst , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 09:41:

Climate Change. What will we be committed to and paying for? The further off-shoring of Industry?
We may retain some Government invested European owned wind farm manufacturing plant.
Utopian thinking is putting the economy at risk says Professor Michael Kelly, emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Cambridge and former chief scientist at the Department of Communities and Local Government,
The government’s 2050 net zero target is unachievable without major social disruption (change over to electricity from natural gas and electric vehicles).
He hit out at the Committee on Climate Change’s claim that decarbonisation can be achieved cheaply. “Their estimates are pie in the sky”, he says. “We have real-world data that shows that the cost would run to trillions of pounds. If politicians listen to them, we are in trouble”.

2. Sydney Ashurst , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 10:39:

The Energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD) is, together with the Energy efficiency directive, the main legislative instruments to promote the energy performance of buildings and to boost renovation within the EU.
The EPBD (2010/31/EU) has been in force since 2010 and helps consumers to make informed choices allowing them to save both energy and money. It has also resulted in a positive change of trends in the energy performance of buildings; following the EPBD introduction of energy efficiency requirements in national building codes, buildings of today consume only half as much as typical buildings from the 1980s.
The revised EPBD (2018/844/EU), which amends parts of the 2010 EPBD and introduces new elements, is an important part of the implementation of the Juncker Commission priorities to build "a resilient Energy Union and a forward-looking climate change policy".
EU countries have until 10 March 2020 to write the new and revised provisions into national law.
The implementation of this directive in the UK has led to a disaster, the expensive installation of cladding to Tower Blocks to NO purpose as it is gradually stripped out.

3. tarien , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 11:22:

Incomprehensible? Maybe not, but certainly to the right thinking mind-it is unbelieveable. Of course the Government if it remains Conservative, should agree not to pay anything to the EU, no matter if it contravenes the present supposedly agreed concept of how the EU sees it. This nation if it is not to go belly up, must and I mean must take charge of its destination, and of its affairs without fear or favour, and show this nations peoples it is patriotic to our cause. Indeed we have many issues of one kind or another, but upermost should be one word only FREEDOM, from those blood suckers that have leeched from us for far too long. Their greed which was inevitable considering how many poorer nations the EU has introduced to the Union-now quite unsustainable and with Britain about to depart, even more unsustainable. End of EU, watch this space.
Frustration does not, sum it up for me.

4. Thomas, Cardiff , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 12:07:

"The EU says that this budget “will allow the EU to focus its resources on the priorities that matter to citizens : climate change, jobs, young people, security and solidarity in the EU.”
I don't recall ever voting for a government which had those priorities, in that order. I certainly didn't vote for a govenrnent which prioritised "solidarity in the EU".

5. James Bertram , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 12:45:

Something else the BBC and main political parties wish to avoid discussing this election - immigration.
Good article on Conservative Woman today: https://www.conservativewom...
'....It is abundantly clear that both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn would prefer not to discuss the matter in front of the electorate for the simple reason that they both want a great deal more immigration, while the public wants to see a lot less... Much as it may be hard for Boris-believers to accept, Mr Johnson is going to continue the Tory folly on the subject. He may well ‘get Brexit done’, but the arguments behind the Brexit debacle will most certainly not be done.'

6. Jon, Wales , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 14:30:

This is really getting too much and out of hand, and is certainly beyond all sensible reason. Thank goodness for Facts4EU articles.
The UK majority voted to LEAVE the EU on 23 June, 2016, not to continue subsidising EU members for their club - If the EU want THEIR club - LET EU MEMBER COUNTRIES PAY FOR IT - they've known for long enough the UK is leaving their institutions.
Prospective UK parliamentary candidates need to answer the most basic of questions:
1. WHY, when the UK needs its own money, do you continue to abuse British people in this way by giving away money which is NOT yours to give away in the first place?
2. WHAT gives you as politicians the right to submit British people to be subservient to a foreign and authoritarian EU regime, and one that TELLS you how many £billions Brits must pay to exit [the EU] despite there being no legal requirement so to do.
THESE QUESTIONS NEED ASKING DURING PRESENT LEADERS DEBATES and to deluded remainers who [wrongly] believe the EU is the best thing since sliced bread?
It is a huge 'pull-factor' for less well off countries on the continent to join the EU, in order their country receives a slice of the 'UK monetary cake'?
They are naturally pro-EU because of that one 'pull-factor' alone. Then find themselves subjected to foreign laws and authority they cannot remove as a member of the EU (example: Poland were TOLD to change some law - described in a previous article).
Though not relevant, I ask readers to consider present issues in Hong Kong. They are fighting [literally] to preserve their democratic values, as indeed other countries have done.
By contrast, a majority of UK politicians now 'fight' the UK electorate to remove any sense of our democratic values, which THEY wish to place in the hands of a corrupt EU? Something stinks of 'cover-up'?

7. James Bertram , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 18:32:

Regards my comment 5: Nigel Farage on tonight - and on the BBC! - and, at some point, talking about immigration (as no mainstream party has the courage to mention it):
https://www.bbc.com/news/el...

8. L Jones , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 21:26:

Who said, in 1979:
''....The first rule of German statecraft is the maintenance of the Common Market link with France. ... Germany and France are the Siamese twins of the European Community. Britain, we ought clearly to understand, all humbug set aside, is expendable. Her function in the Community is to provide the continent with a captive market for dear food, and to place at the disposal of the Community for common use Britain's assets, whether they be the seas around her coasts (the ‘Community's fish stocks’) or her sources of power (the ‘Community's energy stocks’). It is not by accident that Britain finds herself the milch cow of Europe: that was the idea of it from the start. ... [T]he capture of the United Kingdom by the Common Market represented the reversal of Britain's successful maintenance of her independence since the 16th century: the counter-attack in a new, non-military form had at last succeeded and reduced the historic arbiter of Europe, at least temporarily, to the disarmed status of another European state. The combination of Germany and France, that eventuality dreaded and always frustrated by our forefathers, has produced, albeit under an expected guise, the outcome they foresaw....''?
Wasn't he prescient?

9. Ross , Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 23:00:

So 90 % goes on just 3 broad categories. 69% goes on subsidies or where I come from we call them bribes. Alot of the 21% on CC will essentially be subsidies / bribes.
Truly amazing !!

10. Concerned , Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 06:06:

Comment 8 L Jones, this is very well put, you have clearly stated what I have believed from day 1 of the EU, I wasn't happen when we joined the EEC either, so when the referendum was announced I thought this was at last the chance to vote to leave. Of course as history will write (hopefully incorrected), this historic referendum result for almost 4 years has been ignored! Now two parties want a second referendum whatever they want to call it before the first is implemented, which of course is cloud cuckoo land.

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