The U.K. could be about to improve its financial offer to the European Union ahead of a crucial meeting of the bloc’s leaders in December, Bloomberg reports.
Members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s divided cabinet will consider Britain’s divorce from the EU at a meeting Monday afternoon of the Brexit sub-committee that could be key to unlocking the most controversial matter in the negotiations -- money.
Britain is “on the brink of making some serious movement forward” and starting to break the “logjam,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond told the BBC on Sunday.
While Hammond is among the most pro-European members of cabinet, his suggestion follows Brexit Secretary David Davis’s hint from Berlin on Friday that more details on a financial settlement would be presented within weeks. With businesses clamoring for clarity and the departure just 16 months away, pressure is mounting to break the impasse.
How Much?
The EU is pushing for Britain to pay at least 60 billion euros ($71 billion) to cover budgetary commitments and future liabilities such as pensions for EU civil servants. So far, May has said she will make 20 billion euros of budget payments after Brexit, and is going through the other items line by line.
The Times said that while the government wouldn’t put a figure on it, it was likely to add another 20 billion euros to what it’s already agreed to. There’s a risk that might not be enough to unblock talks. It’s also unlikely to go down well domestically.
“If we start saying that we’re going to give 40 to 50 billion to the EU, I think the public will go bananas, absolutely spare,” Robert Halfon, a Conservative lawmaker and former minister, said late Sunday in a BBC radio interview. “That is going to be very difficult if it is going to be that sum, amount of money.”
Halfon has a point: one of the main messages of the pro-Brexit wing in last year’s referendum was that it would put an end to sending large sums of money to the EU, and polling shows the British public are adverse to paying a large exit bill. A YouGov poll in September found that even a bill of 20 billion pounds was unpalatable to 63 percent of voters surveyed.
“We are waiting for a substantial offer from the British,” Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra said on Monday. “It has to be concrete and on the table instead of in the press.”