EXCLUSIVE: Burnham set to rip up Budget numbers with huge extra EU costs
The £bn's-deep black hole: How Burnham’s Brussels Summit could break the new Budget
Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2026
Taxed on Wednesday, spent in Brussels 3 weeks later? The hidden EU cost of Healey’s Budget
PLUS, the former hardline Communist whom Burnham will be negotiating against
Now we know what Andy Burnham and his Chief Negotiator Hamish Falconer are set to agree to, at the EU-UK Summit in three weeks’ time.
This report from the Brexit Facts4EU think-tank, in collaboration with Stand for Our Sovereignty, and The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK.Org), brings home the huge costs of what it seems the PM will agree in Brussels on 20 November. It has been shared exclusively with our friends at GB News.
The three pillars to be agreed
“We aim to complete negotiations on a common sanitary and phyto-sanitary area [SPS agri-food agreement], a linkage between our emissions trading systems, and the creation of a youth experience scheme, as a package for the Summit.”
- Maroš Šefčovič, EU Negotiator and EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, EU Parliament, 19 Oct
The massive ‘Burnham bill’ for the UK
The EU’s Chief Negotiator immediately went on to confirm a bombshell first broken by Brexit Facts4EU; that any agreement with the UK would involve large, inappropriate payments.
“…an appropriate financial contribution from the UK towards reducing economic, social and territorial disparities between regions in the Union.”
Mr Šefčovič is referring to the four Funds of the EU’s Cohesion Policy, with a total budget in the current financial framework of €367.3 BILLION (approx £309 bn). The EU are demanding the UK share in these costs as well as them presenting their bills for the 'administration' of each of the three main subject areas.
For the last Cohesion Policy budget while the UK was a Member, the UK paid €22bn (c.£18.4bn GBP) net of all rebates and grants.
The former hardline Communist against whom the UK will be negotiating
Who is this senior EU Commissioner?
In 1985 Maroš Šefčovič left his home country, the Soviet puppet state of Czechoslovakia, and headed east to Moscow - just ahead of the Soviet's brutal crushing of "the Prague Spring".
In going to Russia, Mr Šefčovič avoided the fate of hundreds of his fellow countrymen and women, killed attempting to cross the border in the opposite direction, to the West.
The EU Commissioner spent five years at the elite university, the ‘Moscow State Institute of International Relations’.
Two years in, he applied for formal membership of the hardline Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ) - a serious accolade not granted to just anyone.
Fortunately, the National Archive in Prague holds records of such people. To the right is a copy of his successful application obtained from Národní archiv. (Credit: Dennik / Národní archiv)
It comes with his Moscow State Institute registry numbers.
During Mr Šefčovič’s time in Moscow, a certain Vladimir Putin was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the KGB.
Putin was then sent to East Germany to work with the hated Stasi secret police of that despotic regime.
Pillar 1 – The EU’s ‘Cohesion Policy’
All the money the UK gave to the Cohesion Fund went to subsidising poorer EU countries - and even poorer wannabe members applying to join. This is only one fund out of four Cohesion Policy instruments.
Example of how British money was used – “A bridge too far”
The Brăila bridge in Romania, inaugurated on 06 Jul 2023, connects the Black Sea ports and the Danube Delta with the rest of the country.
[Photo - Brăila bridge, credit: Romanian Govt.]
How much will the UK have to pay post-2027?
The new Cohesion Policy (CP) budget faces downward pressure from net contributor countries refusing to bankroll rising EU costs. The CP will fall anyway, because the Commission has new projects it wants to fund. Our chart realistically assumes a 20% reduction in the CP and the UK being forced to contribute on the same basis as Norway and Switzerland.
Predicted 7-year budget for Cohesion Policy starting post 2027
© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2026 - click to enlarge
Even a reduced EU budget for the CP still leaves the UK taxpayer facing a net bill of roughly £5.5 billion a year for the post-2027 cycle - a permanent cash transfer to Brussels with a guaranteed £0 return to the UK. Proportionately it's even higher this time, as the UK would not benefit from rebates.
Rt Hon Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI, former Single Market Minister and former Secretary of State
commented exclusively to GB News and Brexit Facts4EU
“The EU sees Reset as a great opportunity to take some more money off the long suffering, overtaxed British.
“They want to charge us for adopting their rules and laws, charge us for more EU young people coming to the UK, and make us contribute to their Erasmus+ student programme designed to help many more EU students than UK ones. They have already pocketed around £6 bn of our fish over 12 years as the high price of just talking to them.
“They want us to put tariffs back on things we do not grow or make, putting up business costs and fleecing the consumer. As Brexit Facts4EU have set out forcefully, the EU has big ambitions to spend and to control, that out-run its tax revenues. The UK government is all too likely to give into their greedy demands whilst forgetting to demand anything worth having in return.”
Pillar 2: The Emissions Trading System (ETS) & CBAM
The business sectors to be hardest hit by the EU’s carbon tax regime are called “Energy-Intensive Industries”:
- Manufacturers of basic metals & fabricated metal products, e.g. blast furnaces, steelworks, aluminium smelting
- Chemicals & chemical products, e.g. polymers, synthetics
- Other non-metallic mineral products, e.g. cement kilns, brickworks, commercial glass manufacturing
We then have a significant car industry which is also a high user of energy and imported parts.
All these businesses already face fierce headwinds from the exorbitant cost of energy in the UK, driven by the Government’s zealous pursuit of Net Zero. Mr Burnham appears determined to finish them off, with alignment to the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and its Carbon Border Tax (CBAM).
The UK's carbon market is currently trading at a significant discount compared to the EU system (see chart).
© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2026 - click to enlarge
By dynamically linking, the PM will slap a 14% inflationary tax on the carbon permits British factories are legally forced to buy, simply to operate. According to the ONS Index of Production, the importance of these industries for the UK economy is:
- Metals sector - Annual turnover: £26.1bn
- Chemical products: £34.2bn
- Non-metallic minerals (cement/brick/glass): £14.8bn
- TOTAL: £75.1bn - purely for these three sectors.
Burnham’s proposed EU alignment on 20 November places this industrial manufacturing base, turning over £75 billion, at the mercy of Brussels regulators.
Pillar 3: ‘Youth Experience Scheme’
“The Government set out clear priorities for the reset with the EU in the manifesto. There are no plans for a Youth Mobility Scheme.”
- Nick Thomas-Symonds, then Europe Minister, 21 Jan 2025
Now, Downing Street presents EU 'Youth Mobility' as a minor cultural exchange, but Eurostat reveals the EU’s 16-30 population is larger than the UK’s entire population.
Opening up preferential visas to millions facing high youth unemployment across stagnating Eurozone economies guarantees a large influx of low-wage labour into the UK jobs market, suppressing British wages. Commission sources say the terms are still being debated and may be delayed, but a compromise may be reached at the Summit.
In a Sunday Times interview on 25 October entitled 'Andy Burnham is open to adopting EU free movement' he said:
"...It was a type of immigration that perhaps wasn’t as difficult... The balance of migration has changed, hasn’t it, since then? I think we’ve just got to have an honest discussion about those things.”
© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2026 - click to enlarge
Whilst Downing St claims visas will be capped and time-limited, experience shows many will apply for and receive permanent visas while here.
The Rt Hon the Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI gave us his final comments
“The worst feature of the planned Reset which this good work by Facts4EU has revealed is the requirement the UK rejoins their carbon trading and emissions system.
“This means making energy and energy intensive products dearer, with a big hike in carbon prices. The last thing the UK needs is another increase in energy costs, already the dearest in the advanced world.
“This policy will speed up the closure of plants and factories, driving them out of business with another upwards price surge.
“Nor is it a good idea to submit ourselves more tightly to their energy supply system. We should be restoring UK energy independence, not offering to make us even more import dependent.
“The EU will exploit weakness and might have to deny us the power we need when electricity supply stumbles on the other side of the Channel. Meanwhile in its rush to give in, the UK government forgets to press demands for any benefit we might get out of these expensive talks.”
Observations
Reading this report, the Government will no doubt argue that nothing has yet been definitively agreed. The problem is that we have heard this before, regarding fishing and then Erasmus+. Both have gone ahead at a serious cost to the UK. This time we cannot stay silent before the Summit.
It's vital the public and businesses are as well informed as possible and can let Mr Burnham and his Chief Negotiator, the fledgling MP Hamish Falconer, know their views on what he seems minded to give away. These surrenders will of course be dressed up as being in the best interests of the country, but we cannot reconcile the statements that have come out from politicians and government spokespeople with the realities and costs of what the UK will face if the PM signs up to them.
The latest we hear is that negotiations are in difficulty on the Youth Mobility pillar, but this could either be a smokescreen or just a delay. At some point and in some manner, this is inevitable.
We already have the most open of all free trade deals the EU has ever signed. Why on earth would this Government want to bind the UK to free movement, to EU laws over which we have no say, and to costs in the tens of billions we can't control?
Answers on a postcard, please, to the Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AA.
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Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thurs 29 Oct 2026
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