Brussels – Tony Blair was humiliated yesterday when Jacques Chirac attacked Britain's £3 billion EU rebate hours after the Prime Minister had come to his aid in a row over economic reform.
In the latest clash between the leaders, the French president pocketed a deal designed to help him win a Yes vote in France's referendum on the EU constitution on May 29.
But instead of repaying the Prime Minister by avoiding sensitive issues before a likely May election in Britain, he went out of his way to complain about the rebate Margaret Thatcher won in 1984.
He launched his attack — in response to a question about the shape of the budget from 2007 to 2013 — during a press conference soon after Mr Blair left an EU summit in Brussels.
"We can only truthfully achieve an appropriate balance if we reopen the debate on the British cheque [rebate]," he said.
The rebate might have had some justification when it was secured by "Monsieur Thatcher" — an interesting slip of the tongue — but it could "no longer be justified; it is from the past".
British officials, who had spent two days denying that the rebate was an issue at the summit, immediately circulated a four-page document setting out why it had to be defended at all costs.
The rebate aims to address the way that EU spending is dominated by agricultural subsidies largely favouring small farmers. There are millions of smallholders in France, which designed the system, but few in Britain.
A Government spokesman said the rebate was "fully justified in 1984 and is fully justified now. Even with it, Britain pays two and a half times as much into the EU budget as France in absolute terms. Without it, it would be 14 times as much.
"There can be no deal on future financing in June that does not protect the rebate."
-snip-
(Toby Helm and David Rennie in The Telegraph, March 24, 2005)
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Blow the chunnel, get the British Navy patrolling the channel again, and tell the frogs to piss off.
In other news, the Sun rises in the East.
France always betrays her allies. Blair knew this going in.
The Conservative Brit intelligentsia (almost as anti-American as the left there) was hoping to turn the EU (of which they are a member) into another British Empire. It didn't work out that way, of course. Have they learned their lesson from it?
How can anyone like the french. Please stay out of the EU Great Britain. They hate you there. They want nothing but to pick your pockets and steal your culture. Jump out of that train before it reaches it's scheduled wreck.
France is seriously becoming an enemy of the free world and should be on our hit parade after NK, Iran, and Syria.
chirac is a chamelier.
This may save the EU referendum in France but it'll kill it in Great Britain. Chirac is one of the most ham-fisted politicians of my recollection. I don't know if it is really arrogance so much as a combination of incompetence and a political tin ear. Blair's people must be furious.
The Islamofascists are almost starting to look good compared to the perpetually perfidious French
The Britsih public was seen as supporting the proposed EU constitution; maybe now, hopefully, more of them will have second thoughts. The EU constitution has about as much comparison to a founding document as 52-card-pickup does to poker; you can pretty much make it mean whatever you want. No wonder so many of our supremes like European style international "law".
No more free markets, git it?
Is prick a French word?
Is this guy Blair some kind of masochist? ....The kind of guy who likes to smash his fingers with a hammer because it feels so good when he stops?