Londen onder druk over bijdrage aan EU-begroting (en)

The UK has come under renewed fire for paying too little into the EU's coffers, with both France and the European Commission attacking London's rebate on its EU membership contribution.

Britain's rebate - an annual discount on London's EU membership fee dating back to 1984 - survived as part of a hard-fought December 2005 deal by EU leaders on the bloc's 2007-2013 budget, despite French-led efforts to get rid of the mechanism.

But with EU leaders in 2005 also agreeing to review "all aspects" of the EU budget from 2009 onwards, France is resuming its attacks on London's privileges, UK daily the Financial Times reports.

The paper writes that Paris is pressuring UK finance minister Gordon Brown to hand over part of the rebate, or else France will block an EU deal on multi-billion euro cross-border VAT fraud which London wants to tackle.

By linking the two unrelated issues, France is pushing Mr Brown - who is on course to take over from Tony Blair as UK prime minister this summer - to soften his stance on the rebate.

Mr Brown reportedly believes the EU budget deal at the 2005 summit - which was chaired by Mr Blair as EU president at the time - produced a bad result for Britain, and is seeking a better deal in the upcoming fundamental review of the EU budget from 2009 onwards.

But Mr Brown faces strong pressure to give up the rebate from his potential French counterpart in the future - centre-right candidate for the French presidency Nicolas Sarkozy.

A senior advisor to Mr Sarkozy, the centre-right member of the European Parliament Alain Lamassoure, told Brussels weekly the European Voice that the UK should give up its EU budget rebate by 2013 in return for reductions in EU support to French farmers.

Budget commissioner joins attack

The European Commission has meanwhile been tasked to kick off the reform of the union's finances by making concrete proposals before the end of 2009.

Budget commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite indicated to Spanish daily El Pais on Friday (2 February) that Brussels too wants to get rid of the UK rebate, saying that "The British cheque is a distortion for the own resources of the EU."

"Currently the relation between wealth and what different countries contribute [to the budget] is fairly balanced, except in the United Kingdom. At the time it had an income below the [European] community average, but now this is 115 percent of the average and [the UK] continues to receive the cheque."

The UK rebate was negotiated by prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 on the grounds that her country received less EU agricultural funds than other countries and needed to be compensated.