Peers tell Brussels to give back cash from EU budget
UK - Britain gets a worse deal from the European Union, paying more money in and getting less out, than almost every other member state, according to a House of Lords report.The House of Lords report shows that without its rebate Britain would be the largest net contributor to the EU, and even after the rebate it is the second biggest after Germany.
The Common Agricultural Policy, aimed at boosting farming after the Second World War, still makes up more than 40 per cent of EU spending, with €404 billion set aside for it between 2006 and 2013.
Because of the sectors that are subsidised, France gets 2½ times as much money out of the CAP as Britain, which gets less farming subsidy per person than any other EU country. Recent reforms of the CAP mean that farmers are generally no longer paid to produce food but for owning the land.
The report says that the CAP “has been needlessly expensive, its subsidies have gone overwhelmingly to large farmers, it has done little to arrest the decline in general farm incomes, and it discriminates against farmers from developing countries”. It concludes: “The present system of farm subsidies is insupportable and immoral.”
Source: The Times Online
9 March 2005
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