Osborne defends 50% discount claims over EU budget surcharge

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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U.K. Chancellor George Osborne has defended his claims on Saturday of striking a deal with European Union ministers that will leave Britain paying additional ﾣ850 million in EU budget surcharge bill, insisting it to be a “real win” despite accusations from across the political spectrum of resorting to “smoke and mirrors”.

After Mr Osborne made claims on Friday, it has been indicated by the critics that the reduction in the ﾣ1.7 billion bill had been achieved by bringing forward a rebate to which the U.K. would have been entitled anyway.

But the Chancellor has still insisted of chances of “real doubt” that rebate would apply to the surcharge.

Mr Osborne has said: “The truth is, as always, we have achieved a real win for British taxpayers and having achieved it everyone says ‘oh, of course you were always going to achieve that’.

“But it took a lot of hard discussion, a lot of hard negotiation and it shows that when this government sets out a goal in Europe it goes and achieves it.”

Mr Osborne has also told of being “not clear” going in to the negotiations in a summit in Brussels with EU finance ministers that Britain’s rebate was going to apply to the ﾣ1.7bn surcharge, which was demanded after a recalculation of Britain’s gross national income (GNI) relative to the other 27 member states.

He has said: “It was a real doubt about whether the rebate would apply, apply to the extent it has applied. We have got this bill halved.”

And when the Chancellor was asked if Britain’s contributions to the EU were value for money, he has responded: “I don’t think we get full value for money for all those pounds that get sent to the European Union.”

However, the European finance ministers differ in their claims as they told Britain had not received a discount.

U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has described Mr Osborne’s comments as a “desperate attempt to try and gloss over the fact that the British taxpayer has just lost our very badly indeed.”

Mr Farage has added: “If this is a victory, I’d hate to see what defeat looks like.”

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