Soaring cost of being in the club

Coffee break 1

QUESTION What was the UK’s annual contribution when we joined the Common Market in January 1973?

The British contribution in 1973 was £181 million (equivalent to £2.2 billion today) and the total spending for the european economic Community, as it was then, was £2 billion (£24.2 billion).

Figures for 2015 show the UK paid £14.6 billion to the eU, a seven-fold increase, and received around £3.9 billion back in eUrelated projects.

There are two reasons for the soaring cost of the eU. One is the enlargement of the club from six to 27 members. Most of the 12 members that joined in 2004 and 2007, as well as Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, receive more than they pay in.

Contrary to popular belief, the Common Agricultural Policy is not chiefly responsible for the rise. Farm payments made up 80 per cent of the budget in 1973; they were down to around 40 per cent in 2013.

The big rise has been in socalled structural and cohesion funds, the cash handed to poorer regions. The success of this policy is questionable. Italy received €80.3 billion between 1973 and 2012 to spend on regional projects, yet the gap between the north and south is as wide as ever, a fact seen in the maelstrom of their parliamentary election.

George Howells, Truro, Cornwall.

QUESTION Did JFK circumvent his own trade embargo on Cuban cigars?

The earlier answer related how JFK ordered 1,200 Cuban cigars just before signing an embargo against the country.

This reminded me of the story from the Sixties when the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a former admiral, was throwing a leaving party and a guest asked if he was smoking a Cuban cigar. he replied: ‘It’s been a long-accepted principle of warfare that one should burn the enemy’s crops.’

S. C. Judd, Cardiff.