EU leaders urge UK to withraw budget veto threat
EU leaders have urged British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to reconsider his threat to use the veto to protect Britain’s multi-billion pound rebate or risk crippling negotiations.
Mr Straw sparked fury in Brussels yesterday by entering talks on the rebate’s future vowing the UK government would simply block the EU’s entire future spending proposals if they included ditching a deal which cuts Britain’s EU bill by three billion pounds a year.
Mr Straw was on the attack as soon as he stepped out of his car yesterday, insisting the rebate was justified when it was won by Mrs Thatcher in 1984 and was still fully justified today.
Mr Straw pointed out that the European Commission was proposing a 35% increase in EU spending under a new financial package for the period 2007-2013.
Mr Straw said the UK was given the rebate because the country received relatively little back from the EU budget in the form of farm subsidies and grants to poorer regions of the EU.
Even with the rebate, he said, the UK was paying more towards the EU budget than many other wealthier member states.
Last night’s talks launched three weeks of intense negotiations ahead of a mid-June summit of EU leaders to sort out the future euro-budget.
