GB News can exclusively reveal how much Britain would have contributed to the EU’s budget if we had never left.
The eye-watering sum comes on the fifth anniversary of Britain’s historic departure from the bloc.
Even though Britain officially left the EU on January 31, 2020, it remained in the transition period until December 31 of that year.
This meant it was still on the hook for the EU’s budget that year. After the transition period ended on January 1, 2021, the UK stopped making regular contributions to the EU budget, except for specific agreed payments under the financial settlement (“divorce bill”), which continues in smaller amounts for a few more years.
Britain would have contributed billions to the EU’s budget if we had never left, we can reveal
Getty Images/ChatGPT
Our calculations expose the scale of Britain’s contribution to the continent if we had never left, which would have far exceeded official estimates.
As a member, HM Treasury calculated that Britain had to pay 12.5 per cent of the EU’s budget each year.
However, what is not included in the HM Treasury’s calculations is the EU ‘off-budget funds’, which include external significant foreign aid contributions, with at least £6billion going to Turkey and billions more going to Africa.
Also, given that the amount a country pays into the EU budget varies according to GDP, Britain’s recent performance would have increased its largesse.
Take the first quarter of last year, when the UK was the top-performing country in the G7. With Germany having been in a recession for two years, Blighty would have been on the hook for a larger contribution than Europe’s once economic powerhouse.
Add in the EU’s expanding budget in response to the ballooning debt caused by the Covid pandemic and its commitment to the Green New Deal, and Britain’s contribution would have been higher still.
With these additional obligations priced in, Facts4EU puts Britain’s contribution to the annual EU budget at a conservative estimate of 13.5 per cent.
So, how much would Britain has owed the EU over the last five years?
As our graph (see above) shows, we calculated the UK’s total spend from 2021 to 2025 based on its average projected contribution over the last five years.
Brexit opinion polls over the last five yearsFacts4EUFor the first three years after exiting (2021-2023), Britain would have had to cough up around £66billion.
In 2024 the EU Council set the total EU budget commitments at €189billion. At 13.5 per cent (the conservative percentage for the UK), that would equate to roughly £21.5billion gross in GBP.
For this year, the new EU budget totals €199.4billion (£165.5billion) in commitment appropriations.
This is €10billion (£8.3billion) over the 2024 budget – a six per cent increase. The UK would be on the hook for £22.3bn pounds of this pot.
The UK would have therefore contributed around £106.2billion to the EU over the last five years.
But it doesn’t stop there. Britain would also have had to contribute to the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the EU’s €800billion recovery instrument that was set up as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the green transition.
The instrument is financed entirely through borrowing on the bond market, with repayments spread out until 2058.
Given Britain’s outsized GDP contribution, she would have been expected to cough up around £100billion to the RRF over this timeframe.