The UK pays more into the EU budget

than it gets back.

In 2018 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was forecast to be £4 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at nearly £9 billion.

8th Jul 2019

Each year the UK gets a discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth about £4 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £17 billion in contributions.

The UK doesn’t pay or “send to Brussels” this higher figure of £17.4 billion, or anything equivalent per week or per day. The rebate is applied straight away (its size is calculated based on the previous year’s contributions), so the UK never contributes this much.

The UK’s contributions to the budget vary from year to year, and are forecast to grow towards the end of the decade. They’ve been larger recently than in previous decades.

A membership fee isn’t the same as the total economic cost or benefit of EU membership.

Being in the EU costs money but does it also create trade, jobs and investment that are worth more?

We can be pretty sure about how much cash we put in, but it’s far harder to be sure about how much, if anything, comes back in economic benefits.