Not all Member States are treated the same when it comes to the European Budget. The United Kingdom has benefited from a rebate for years. Why? And for how much longer?

How it works: The UK rebate - to be continued?

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16055158/v003-0033-en_mf.srt

The English pay less to the European  budget than other countries.

Today the budget of the European Union  is 140 billion euros.

And all Member States  have to contribute to it.

In 2006, the British benefited  from a large rebate.

The English talk about  a rebate or a discount.

But the French talk about  'the British cheque'.

In other words,  the French are paying for us Brits.

More diplomatically in Brussels  it's called a correction mechanism

It all started in 1984  at the summit in Fontainebleau

with Margaret Thatcher's  famous declaration:

What we are asking is for a very  large amount of our own money back.

At the time the United Kingdom  had reasons for protesting.

It was much poorer  than the other countries of the EU.

But it paid much more into the European  budget than it received in return.

The reason was the budget  of the Common Agricultural Policy,

which represents over 70%  of the European budget.

It's the large agricultural countries  that benefit the most from it,

Our own money back...  Back, back, back, back, back...

The British cheque  is a long mathematical formula.

You can't understand it?  That's no surprise.

In 28 years the calculation  has become horribly complicated.

The British rebate  has often been highly criticised.

And they in turn received  a rebate on the rebate.

So since then they have paid less than  the others towards the British bill.

That's the case for Germany,  Netherlands, Austria and Sweden.

And France?  It still receives the most from the CAP.

The French and the English  no longer want to negotiate.