Monday, March 9, 2009

EU membership costs each Briton £2,000 a year

The Taxpayers' Alliance figures for the cost of belonging to the EU are much higher than the narrow budget contributions reported by the Treasury.

The UK pays more than £6 billion a year in direct support for the European Commission and other EU projects.

"The EU's waste, mismanagement and incompetence costs all of us a fortune. It's wrong that these unaccountable bureaucrats are allowed to run up such a huge bill for ordinary people, particularly with everyone struggling in a recession."

The TPA says the real cost of EU membership is actually many times higher than the EU claims due to complying with European regulations, the cost of Government bureaucracy to administer those rules, and other consequences of membership like food prices inflated by farm subsidies...

[Pop quiz: everyone who's surprised, raise your hand. Just as I thought, smart bunch.

Quiz 2: What's the difference between Brussels managing its 27 member states and Washington managing 50? {Hint: we've twice the states...}]


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, no wonder EU is falling apart. But that number astonished me, £2000 is a little too much. I wonder if the money is at least put into the right place, but like it always happens, it usually is not. With high costs like these I would be surprised if some countries didn't break off of Eu by the end of this year. A union like theirs is not bound to work anywhere on earth. Too many different governments and too many differences in the countries. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Take care, Julie