The EU gets a lot of bad advertising here in the UK especially from the so called right wing press.Sometimes the message can be exaggerated or amplified to create the EU bogeyman continually trying to bleed the UK dry. I am no fan of the EU but there may be an argument for a little perspective when it comes to our EU contribution, which often comes up in the media.
It might be argued that the EU is another conduit for redistributing income and wealth across the continent. Not surprising given the socialist tendencies of so many of its top officials. The net contributors are like those at the top of the tree in any progressive tax system such as exists in the UK whilst the net recipients are like the benefit claimants at the other end of the scale. You don’t really have to think much about who the net contributors are.
Yes, Germany is one, but that is no surprise given that it is the economic powerhouse of Europe and the second really large economy in the world after the U.S. in the HDI index, a pretty impressive performance. The HDI index is a measure of economic development of any given nation. Small and prosperous nations like Norway and Switzerland dominate the upper reaches of this index, so it is no small feat for Germany. All the bigger and richer member states are net contributors, countries such as the UK, Sweden, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Belgium.
What percentage of UK public spending goes to the EU? If you take the net figure for 2015, the percentage is actually very small, about 1.18 percent, although in absolute terms a figure of £8.6B. In this sense it is perhaps possible to overstate on the euro sceptic side the direct financial inroads the EU makes into the UK economy. On the other hand, it is still a very big number. To put this in context, that figure comfortably covers the two new aircraft carriers being built for the UK navy. Alternatively you could buy sixteen new hospitals in approximate terms or dozens of new schools (the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, one of the most expensive schools in Britain, cost close to £50m to build). That’s still quite a lot of extra money that we would be free to spend if the money was still in our pockets. So there is some point in the UKIP argument.
Pro EU supporters would of course note the small net contribution of the UK to the EU although it is a small percentage of a very large figure. Fair enough, but it also disguises the fact that we pay about £20B gross to the EU in contributions from UK government and households, the equivalent figure was £17.2B in 2013, giving a figure of about 2% of total public expenditure. This is expenditure that is taken out of our hands and given to an external authority to decide how to spend. Some people would argue of course that it would be far better for us to spend our own money rather than give it away to a supranational authority to make such decisions. The EU spends lots of that money on the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) which is a strong vested interest on the continent. We pay more in than we get out, but EU supporters might argue that we have access to EU markets and contracts as a result of our contribution. But is such a contribution worth it? If we were out of the EU we would still be trading with one another. Trade is trade and politics is politics.