Pretty sure the EU won’t let the UK rejoin with the same privileges next time
Ashamed to ask as an EU citizen, but did UK have some kind of special founding member privileges or something before? Didn’t think we had that in the EU, only the vote by population size stuff.
The UK joined later.
And yes they did have special concessions (namely a currency opt-out, like Denmark, and a Schengen opt-out, like Ireland and I believe others), although the UK were far from the only ones that had special concessions. E.g. France has a roughly the same sized economy to the UK yet contributed billions less to the budget.
I’m not really sure why people act like the UK is the only country who had concessions. Various countries have all kinds of concessions, and the wealthiest ones typically had more, because they had the most political leverage.
The UK is the only country that got a discount on their payments.
Edit: I stand corrected. One of a few
Literally not true at all. France and the UK have a practically identical economy size, but France consistently paid billions less.
You are mistaken if you think countries had leverage to make demands but chose not to use it out of charity.
I found a list, and while I was indeed wrong, as there are other rebates, France is not on the List.
I don’t know which numbers you are citing, but if you look at net contributions, payments from the EU to the members may of course also vary.
The UK was the first country to receive a discount though.
Not being part of the same rebate scheme does not mean France didn’t pay less.
It literally does. France does not receive a rebate on the normal calculation by gross national income.
France did receive more EU payouts than the UK in the past ( Example from 2017 ), leading to lower net payments. That’s not the same as paying less in the first place though.
