BRUSSELS last night sparked fury after backing plans to increase the European Union’s budget to £787billion and directly tax British workers. A powerful finance committee of MEPs voted in favour of the huge rise alongside a raft of other power-grabbing measures, including the right to impose levies directly. Britain even faces losing its hard-won EU rebate worth £2.6billion a year.
Conservative Europe minister David Lidington said last night: “All around the EU, national governments and millions of ordinary families are having to take hard decisions about spending.
“EU institutions, like everyone else, need to face up to the responsibility of choosing priorities and delivering value for money. The committee’s decision is a kick in the teeth for taxpayers throughout Europe.”
The EU’s previous framework budget, for the years 2007 to 2013, was set at around 864billion euros.
Under the proposed five per cent increase, the next seven-year budget, from 2014 to 2020, would soar to 907billion euros, or £787billion.
The deal would also enable Brussels to impose direct levies on citizens in members states via carbon or aviation taxes. And it could see the abolition of national rebates and an end to the system of returning unspent EU money to national governments.
Prime Minister David Cameron, with support from some other EU leaders, wants the budget frozen, arguing it is unacceptable for Europe to hoover up growing sums of taxpayers’ cash when member states are having to make painful cuts at home.
But Tory eurosceptic MP Douglas Carswell warned that the report demonstrated the EU intends to ignore the calls for restraint. He said: “This vote shows that the eurocrats simply don’t get it. Source
