Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 11 December 2018 - Strasbourg

New general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2019 (debate)

  Jonathan Arnott, on behalf of the EFDD Group. – Mr President, first of all, I would like to echo the sentiments of colleagues and send my very best wishes to those who have been injured today and I hope that there is no loss of life.

There are only two certainties in life – death and taxes, and it doesn’t seem entirely certain who that quote should be attributed to but what is certain is that it is out of date. So here’s my quote: the three certainties in life are death, taxes and that the European Union budget and power will continue increasing. That’s the principle of ever closer union in the Treaties and the principle that I think hastened the UK’s decision to leave.

Every year we show genuine savings that can be made to the EU budget but every year they aren’t. This year’s increase will be different because the UK will only be an EU Member State for 89 of those 365 days. So this budget is reliant on one thing – that the UK will leave the European Union with a deal and that the UK will be paying the so-called divorce bill, because the Attorney General’s advice is that the UK legal obligations are something in the region of EUR 8 billion compared with the divorce bill agreement of EUR 39 billion. That would, if there were no deal, leave the EU short part way through the year.

So the question becomes, will we have a deal? Well that is very much questionable at the moment because Theresa May is seeking assurances from EU leaders on a deal that she knows does not have the confidence of the British Parliament. Indeed, there are questions as to whether there will be a motion of no confidence, either from parliament or from her own backbenchers by the end of the week.

Well, I would certainly, for one, love to have a good, decent, honest, free trade deal between the UK and the European Union with reasonable cooperation between us both, but that sadly, at the moment, doesn’t seem to be on the table. Ms May’s deal is what is on the table, and there are many people who would prefer no deal to May’s deal.

The European Union budget, as well as the UK, needs to be prepared.