Quote Originally Posted by Fenring View Post
if you paid attention to earlier years, you'll notice that France's net contribution used to be tiny until a few years ago. In 2003 the Netherlands, a country with 1/4 of the population of France, made a larger absolute contrubition to the EU budget than France. Click
I'm afraid your link mentions net contributions. I meant simply total contribution itself. Sorry, I used the confusing term absolute contribution.
My point was, that France will either use its EU funds for income support of farmers, or she will have to get compensation from other EU funds, or there needs to be a drastic reduction of French payments. As is, France is already one of the largest net contributors, and without the CAP she will become a singularly large net contributor. This is...'unlikely' to happen.
So, one can dislike the CAP - I do too - but even scrapping it altogether will not make much of a difference to France's net contribution in the long run.

Furthermore, not to be a pest, but your link strikes me as decidedly unreliable. I mean, it's newest publication is 'The EU - Germany's Fourth Reich!!1!'


I'm sorry, but British books and sites like this are exactly what I meant in my previous post:
Quote Originally Posted by Louis
I'll go out on a limb and guess that you read mostly English language foreign news. In the British press, there exists a persistant image of France as forever living off EU funds

Reality, of course, does not usually correspond with what the British tabloids (from the Daily Mail to the Telegraph) write.

~~~~~


To be fair to the British press, some journalists are paying attention:
Blair 'exaggerates EU contribution'

Britain has been exaggerating its net contribution to Brussels by over £500m during its row with France about how to finance the EU.

The exaggeration was revealed in the Treasury's delayed but definitive assessment of Britain's annual contribution, an obscure official document entitled Statement on the 2005 EC Budget, which has finally been released after a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

In their negotiations with the EU, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have said that Britain's net contribution to the EU in 2003, the latest year for which complete numbers are available, was £3.7billion, considerably more than the £2.6billion the EU itself claims.
I want my money back! Labour has lying and spinning in Europe too!
*slams handbag on table*