Observations

“And so this was Christmas,
The EU had fun.
It gave out some money,
And said ‘we are one’.”
(With apologies to John Lennon)

As ever, the public announcement on Christmas Day by the EU was to promote the EU and did not give much detail. For that we had to delve into the EU Commission’s accompanying documents, and use the amounts to work out the percentages which were not provided.

Call us cynical, but for the EU Commission to release this information on Christmas Day was in itself a breath-taking act, even by the EU’s own astonishing standards of continuous propaganda.

It’s always easier to be generous with other people’s money

To most readers, £5 billion sounds like a lot of money. To the EU Commission, however, this is a drop in the UK’s territorial waters compared to the EU’s annual expenditures. On top of that, this money is off-budget so it does not even affect the EU’s Commission’s other plans in any way. And of course it all comes from the taxpayers of member countries in the first place, before being re-badged and sent out as EU largesse.

The real cost of the departure of the UK from the EU will be felt by the citizens and businesses of the EU’s member countries. As the EU’s Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn admitted on Christmas Day:

“adapting structurally to our new relationship with the UK will require much more long-term adjustment than this reserve alone will ever be able to provide’.

(Incidentally, the EU Commission’s President is German, and the man who holds the purse strings, Johannes Kahn, is Austrian.)

This is a publicity stunt

We suggest that this “Brexit Adjustment Reserve” is little more than a publicity stunt. It’s our opinion that this is designed to frame the figure of £5 billion in people’s minds, as the total cost to the EU of the departure of its second-most important member.

The reality is much closer to what Johannes Kahn said. The cost to the EU will be much, much higher.

Why the bribe to EU fishermen?

The EU has allocated more than seven times this much to its own fishermen, despite the fact that on 01 January EU fishing boats – including EU marine environment-destroying super-trawlers – will have unchanged access to the UK’s supposedly sovereign territorial waters.

We suggest that leaders such as President Emmanuel Macron of France needed something to sell to his electorate. His nation’s share in a three-quarters of a billion pound bung to EU fishermen must surely have been welcome in the Elysee Palace over Christmas….

Talking of bungs

We hope you appreciated the above article, researched from official sources as always. We picked it up on Christmas Day but needed to analyse the detailed documentation before we could bring you the facts. It came just before we were planning to produce analysis of the EU-UK trade deal on fishing in the UK, as we have serious concerns about the way this is being presented to MPs and the public. We still plan to publish our research on this, as soon as we can, along with other commentary on the 'trade deal'.

In this article we haven't even raised the supplementary questions. Does this amount to state aid? Will the UK Government now commence proceedings under the 'Level Playing Field' provisions of the 'trade deal'? Will the Government confirm that the UK will not be liable for paying a share of this new fund, as it has been doing for all other EU commitments under the Withdrawal Agreement?

We know this next part is hard. Covid measures have hit many people's incomes. The whole Covid thing has certainly hit the level of donations we receive, which were already less than we needed to survive. With no other source of income, we rely on members of the general public to keep us going.

We are most grateful to readers who have donated in recent days, but we badly need more readers to do the same if we are to continue researching facts, scrutinising, publishing, and lobbying MPs. Quick, secure, and confidential donation links are below this article, or you can use our Donations page here. If you have never donated before, please, please, keep us going with a donation now, today. Thank you so much.