More great news from the new Private Eye. Notice how when the UK is out of the EU we lose all ability to shape policy ....
also notice the fact that "No Deal" would play right into the EUs favour ... it's almost the best thing for them.
BREXIT will leave a €10-12bn hole in the EU's annual budget, prompting Brussels beancounters to work out how and whether the gap can be plugged. Germany, the highest net contributor, is unwilling to pick up any more of the tab.
One revenue-raising option the European Commission is keen to push is a tax on financial transactions (Er). A "Robin Hood Tax" is easy to sell to a European public still eager to tax financiers, but it has, until now, been a harder sell to governments.
Six years after the Commission proposed an EU-wide FTT aimed at raising €30-35bn a year — a large chunk of which would be raised in the City of London — the bill remains on the table. In 2013, after the UK and several others vetoed the plan, 11 countries agreed to activate the EU's "enhanced co-operation" clause, which allows a group of countries to proceed with a law, in a so far unsuccessful attempt to break the logjam.
However, an EU FTT now has a new argument in its favour: it would keep up a hefty post-Brexit UK contribution to EU coffers.
In 2014, the Treasury challenged the right of the EU-11 to proceed with the tax at the European Court of Justice, although this was quickly thrown out by the court, which pointed out that the FIT proposal had not been agreed. However, former chancellor George Osborne's real objection was to the "residence" and "issuance" principles in the FTT, which would make City traders liable to pay the tax every time they did business with firms in the eurozone-11.
Back in 2014, the Treasury was adamant that the ECJ decision meant the UK would be able to challenge the final FTT law "if it is not in our national interest and undermines the integrity of the single market". If Theresa May takes the UK out of the single market, that option will no longer exist — all the more reason for Brussels to be sanguine about a "hard Brexit".