The UK pays more into the EU budget than it gets back.

In 2018 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was forecast to be £4 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at nearly £9 billion.

Each year the UK gets a discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth about £4 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £17 billion in contributions.



The UK doesn’t pay or "send to Brussels" this higher figure of £17.4 billion, or anything equivalent per week or per day. The rebate is applied straight away (its size is calculated based on the previous year's contributions), so the UK never contributes this much.

The UK’s contributions to the budget vary from year to year, and are forecast to grow towards the end of the decade. They’ve been larger recently than in previous decades.



A membership fee isn’t the same as the total economic cost or benefit of EU membership.

Being in the EU costs money but does it also create trade, jobs and investment that are worth more?

We can be pretty sure about how much cash we put in, but it’s far harder to be sure about how much, if anything, comes back in economic benefits.

£350 million a week doesn’t include the rebate
It’s been claimed that we send £350 million a week to the EU. That misses out the rebate, and it doesn’t represent the total economic costs and benefits of EU membership to the UK.

£350 million is roughly what we would pay to the EU budget without the rebate. The UK actually paid closer to £250 million a week.

The UK Statistics Authority has said the EU membership fee figure of £19 billion a year, or £350 million a week, is "not an amount of money that the UK pays to the EU each year".

Since then, the new chair of the Authority described use of the figure by the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, as “a clear misuse of official statistics”.

The UK gets money back
The government then gets some of that money back, mainly through payments to farmers and for poorer areas of the country such as Wales and Cornwall.

In 2017, the UK's ‘public sector receipts’ are estimated to be £4.3 billion.

So overall we paid in £8.9 billion more than we got back.

The Treasury figures note payments the EU makes directly to the private sector, such as research grants. In 2016, these were worth an estimated £2.3 billion, so including them could reduce our net contribution further still.

The money we get back will be spent on things the government may or may not choose to fund upon leaving the EU. It’s not enough to look at the net contribution in isolation because what we get back isn’t fully under our control.

Different figures from different sources
The Treasury's European Union Finances release provides the best figures for the UK’s contributions to the EU budget, according to the ONS.

The Treasury and ONS both publish figures on the subject, but they're slightly different. The ONS also publishes other figures on contributions to EU institutions which don't include all our payments or receipts, which complicates matters.

The ONS figures ultimately come from the Treasury, and the numbers aren't the same because they categorise and account for the payments differently.

The European Commission is still another source of information which shows lower contributions.

It’s also a sad day for the EU and Europe.

Putin

I'd say everyone should be pleased, things just got safer in Europe

Nothing has changed and in 11 months from now, nothing will change either.

There will never be a Brexit.

There will never be a Brexit.

It's already done.

Boris Johnson just gave a clear signal he plans to ditch UK food standards to secure a Trump trade deal

Adam Payne1 hour ago
The UK government has given its clearest sign yet that it plans to shift away from accepting EU food standards in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Trump.
The UK farming industry fears that Johnson will ditch current EU standards which forbid the sale of products such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.
Johnson is refusing to sign up to maintain EU rules after the end of the Brexit transition period.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The United Kingdom has just given its clearest sign yet that it plans to ditch its commitment to maintaining EU food standards after Brexit in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump.

UK officials will break away from strict EU rules on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, which cover food and agricultural goods, at an upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation, City AM reports.

The UK is currently in an 11-month, post-Brexit transition period, during which it will continue to follow all EU rules and regulations — including those relating to food standards.

However Johnson's government will at this meeting make a "clear statement about future intentions" on how the UK will approach food standards in its future trade deals with the US and other countries, City AM reports.

Last month, the National Farmers' Union's Brexit director told Business Insider that the industry fears the government will ultimately trade away current UK food standards in talks with "fearsome" US negotiators.

"We all know in a trade negotiation, at some point, it [the UK] is going to need to make concessions," Nick von Westenholz told Business Insider.

"And this isn't a negotiation with a small partner where the UK can flex its muscles.

"This is a negotiation with one of the largest economies in the world with an absolutely fearsome reputation for negotiating trade deals, and one which under the current administration is even more transactional in the way it views trade relationships."

EU rules block US food like chicken and beef from entering its markets due to rules on hygiene and animal welfare.

While Prime Minister Johnson has said the UK will not lower its food standards after leaving the EU, he has also said his government's policy will be dictated "by science and not by mumbo jumbo."

Boris Johnson wants to break free from EU rules

Boris Johnson farm
Oli Scarff – WPA Pool/Getty Images
Any shift away from EU rules at the WTO meeting would irk Brussels. The Brexit deal agreed by the UK ties the country to a "duty of sincere cooperation" clause, which obliges both sides to act in good faith during the departure process.
The NFU is urging the government to include a legal commitment to maintaining current levels of food standards in a piece of legislation called the Agriculture Bill. However, ministers are refusing to do so.

The UK is set to begin negotiating a trade deal with the US in the next few weeks.

The Trump administration has said it will prioritise access to Britain's agricultural markets when trade talks begin.

The US Trade Representative's objectives for negotiations, published last year, said the UK "should remove expeditiously unwarranted barriers that block the export of U.S. food and agricultural products."

It added that "unjustified trade restrictions" enforced in the UK as a result of its recently-expired EU membership "eliminate practices that unfairly decrease U.S. market access opportunities."

Funny how the Right championed Brexit in the name of nationalism and sovereignty and anti-trade, yet the first order of business on their agenda is to subordinate the UK’s national interest and food security to aggressive US import demands from Trump. It’s almost as if they’re completely full of shit or something!

Chlorinated chicken was banned by the European Union (EU) in 1997. Although chlorinated chicken is still banned in the EU, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has deemed chlorine-washed chicken safe. In a 2005 study, the EFSA found that treating poultry carcasses with the four most-commonly used antimicrobial substances “would be of no safety concern.”

Still, politicians in Europe treat this more of a political issue rather than an issue of science, and have voted towards protectionist measures that continue to keep US chicken out, even though its own food safety authority has deemed these products safe.

Why isn't Canada jumping in and working on trade deals with the UK. Seems to be they would be a prime partner for Canada to expand it's exports with. Or are they and I'm just not seeing any thing about it.

Canadian firms will see no change in how they trade with the UK for the duration of the transition period.

Recognizing the need for certainty during the transition period, Canada has agreed to the UK remaining party to CETA and all other Canada-EU agreements for the duration of the transition period. This includes multilateral agreements in force between Canada and the EU.

Yet the transition period is over.