UK and Brussels clash over £ 40bn Brexit divorce law

Brussels and London were closed on Thursday in a dispute over the size of the UK’s Brexit bill, after the EU suggested Britain would be forced to pay 47.5 billion euros (40.8 billion pounds) as apart from its post-Brexit agreements.

But the UK Treasury insisted the Brexit divorce deal remained within its previous central strip, between £ 35bn and £ 39bn. An updated budget will be released next week.

The highest amount was first reported in the EU’s annual accounts for 2020, which the European Commission released late last month.

The obligations refer to past commitments made when the UK was an EU member state and during the post-Brexit transition period, which ended in late December.

An agreement on the Brexit divorce was one of the first key parts of the talks between London and Brussels after the 2016 vote to leave the EU, and one of the most difficult to resolve.

The methodology was agreed by both parties in the withdrawal agreement, but any expected increase in the bill would irritate conservative Eurosceptics.

The sum of the EU accounts, which will be paid over a period of many years, exceeds previous UK estimates.

A document from the House of Commons library on the Brexit divorce bill said there was “no definitive cost to the deal”, but that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, the The UK said the net cost to the UK could be £ 34bn.

The House of Commons newspaper, produced in December 2020, showed that UK payments to the EU budget fell from around £ 9bn in 2020 to around £ 1bn in 2025 before ‘achieve a gradual reduction in several years.

Under the final agreement, the United Kingdom entered the EU budget as a member state until the end of the Brexit transition period, on 1 January 2021. The United Kingdom received funding from the programs. of the EU during this time.

The overall liability is partly related to the UK’s participation in outstanding EU spending commitments at the end of December, for which it will be paid in subsequent years. It also reflects Britain’s share of obligations related to the EU’s role as an employer, for example, pensions and sickness insurance for retired staff.

Compensating factors include the portion of UK competition fines in cases that had been decided before the end of last year.

The EU plans to provide bimonthly reports to the UK on actual outstanding amounts, and payments will be set monthly.

The Treasury said the EU document was an accounting estimate rather than accurately reflecting the actual figure of what would be paid. The Irish figure RTE previously reported the figure of 47.5 billion euros.