EU finance chiefs give UK until September 2015 to pay huge bill
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EUROPEAN Union finance ministers agreed yesterday to extend a December 1 deadline for Britain to pay a huge 2.1-billion-euro (US$2.6 billion) bill until September 2015, but the amount is not changed for now, sources said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who faces a general election in May, had warned of a “major problem” if his demands for an extension and a reduction were not met.
“The agreement will include installments until first of September 2015,” one European source said.
The source added that ministers had recognized the “unique situation” and asked the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to “change the rules.”
The EU made the demand in October after recalculating the budgets of member states going back several years.
Another European source said the amount of 2.1 billion euros — arrived at after recalculation — would remain the same for now but that it could be renegotiated after the British elections.
“The amount demanded from Britain is unchanged, but the British can pay when they want up to September 1,” the source said, adding that negotiations on the amount could be included in talks on the EU’s 2016 budget.
“They could pay after the elections.”
Earlier yesterday the finance ministers told Britain that the only way to resolve a row over a surprise budget bill to Brussels is to pay in interest-free installments, officials said, but the British finance minister insisted the bill was “unacceptable.”
The row has become a highly contentious issue in Britain, putting Cameron under pressure from Eurosceptics at home and costing British support for the country’s continued membership of the EU.
“The demands that Britain pays 1.7 billion pounds (US$2.7 billion) on the first of December is unacceptable,” Chancellor George Osborne said as he arrived for the meeting. “I will make sure we get a better deal for Britain.”
Cameron has found sympathy from Italy, Germany and France because the bill is due to a historical statistical review stretching back over a decade.
Italy, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, presented the instalment compromise at a ministerial meeting in Brussels, seeking to give Cameron a way to save face over the 2.1 billion euro bill.
Interest on the late payments would also be waived.
“We are open to being flexible,” Spain’s Economy Minister Luis De Guindos said as he arrived for the meeting.
But Osborne’s counterparts and EU officials say it is out of the question to let Britain, Europe’s third largest economy, contribute less.
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