Monday 24 August 2009

The Cost of EU Membership

Next year our membership of the EU will apparently increase by 60% to £6.4 billion.

Apparently we 'should be sharing the burden of membership' with the new countries from Eastern Europe according to the Government.

Hopefully someone will do a cost benefit analysis of this. I for one increasingly wonder whether the cost is worth it. I'm sure there are many others who will be thinking the same this evening.

3 comments:

Ben said...

According to http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk, total local and central government spending in 2009 is £638bn, putting this higher EU figure at broadly 1%.

Lets assume that we're a net contributor to the tune of 100% and get none of it back.

£164bn in local government, £110bn on pensions, £110bn on health care, £122bn on defence, education, and welfare.

The government's "credit card" has £794bn on it, up £181bn on last year's figure of £613bn. We spent £30bn, a little under 5%, paying the interest.

Roysses said...

The £6.4bn is the Gross amount.The farm subsidies received back, plus infrastructure and dsignated area support halves that amount.

We waste more than the £3bn net cost on appalling Ministry of Defence project management according to the Select Committee

Rather than EU bashing, lets get our own Government Depts in order

Roysses said...

The £6.3bn is the Gross cost

When the farm subsidies, infrastructure grants and special area support payments are deducted, the net payment is nearer £3bn

Our own Ministry of defence is currently wasting more than that, according to the Select Committee. so worry about sorting out UK profligacy before bashing the EU