Frm The Sun -
French milk EU for too long ...
WITH masterly understatement, Tony Blair says there is “sharp disagreement” between him and Jacques Chirac.
What he means is that the grasping French President is hanging on to his country’s EU handouts like a miser on a flagday.
And he wants us to give up £3billion a year without a whimper.
No chance. France has milked EU taxpayers for too long.
In ten years since 1994, British farmers have been paid £28billion from the Brussels coffers.
Their French counterparts have received more than double that, a massive £68billion.
France has ridden the gravy train since the Common Market began almost 50 years ago.
French farmers freely admit they wouldn’t survive in a genuinely free market where everyone competed on level terms.
Not only has the mad CAP produced wine lakes and butter mountains, it has dumped cheap food on the Third World, forcing African farmers into poverty.
The obscenity of it all is that the EU spends more on a cow in a French field than half the world’s poor are forced to live on.
The scale of the imbalance caused by the CAP is mind-boggling.
It accounts for 40 per cent of the EU’s spending, even though only five per cent of EU jobs are in farming and produce less than two per cent of Europe’s wealth.
Blair shows no sign of budging an inch on his insistence that Britain’s rebate stays unless the whole can of worms that is the CAP is reformed from top to bottom.
That is good. He must, however, convince the sceptics that no deal will be done in which the beleaguered EU constitution is sneaked in through the back door in return for Britain keeping what is rightfully ours.
What makes the French intransigence even more galling is that for all the pretence that the country is the lynchpin of all things European, the truth is that France only cares about its own interests.
Its record in breaking the EU rules on the internal market is deplorable, with 149 infringements in three years.
Britain was guilty of only 63 breaches in that time.
So like much of the EU, we toe the line but the French ride roughshod over the niceties.
Chirac is now a busted flush, having got his come-uppance from French voters for ignoring their fears over immigration, jobs and the country’s uncompetitive economy.
Blair must make sure the old fox doesn’t succeed in taking him down with him.
thesun.co.uk
French milk EU for too long ...
WITH masterly understatement, Tony Blair says there is “sharp disagreement” between him and Jacques Chirac.
What he means is that the grasping French President is hanging on to his country’s EU handouts like a miser on a flagday.
And he wants us to give up £3billion a year without a whimper.
No chance. France has milked EU taxpayers for too long.
In ten years since 1994, British farmers have been paid £28billion from the Brussels coffers.
Their French counterparts have received more than double that, a massive £68billion.
France has ridden the gravy train since the Common Market began almost 50 years ago.
French farmers freely admit they wouldn’t survive in a genuinely free market where everyone competed on level terms.
Not only has the mad CAP produced wine lakes and butter mountains, it has dumped cheap food on the Third World, forcing African farmers into poverty.
The obscenity of it all is that the EU spends more on a cow in a French field than half the world’s poor are forced to live on.
The scale of the imbalance caused by the CAP is mind-boggling.
It accounts for 40 per cent of the EU’s spending, even though only five per cent of EU jobs are in farming and produce less than two per cent of Europe’s wealth.
Blair shows no sign of budging an inch on his insistence that Britain’s rebate stays unless the whole can of worms that is the CAP is reformed from top to bottom.
That is good. He must, however, convince the sceptics that no deal will be done in which the beleaguered EU constitution is sneaked in through the back door in return for Britain keeping what is rightfully ours.
What makes the French intransigence even more galling is that for all the pretence that the country is the lynchpin of all things European, the truth is that France only cares about its own interests.
Its record in breaking the EU rules on the internal market is deplorable, with 149 infringements in three years.
Britain was guilty of only 63 breaches in that time.
So like much of the EU, we toe the line but the French ride roughshod over the niceties.
Chirac is now a busted flush, having got his come-uppance from French voters for ignoring their fears over immigration, jobs and the country’s uncompetitive economy.
Blair must make sure the old fox doesn’t succeed in taking him down with him.
thesun.co.uk