UK Rebate ‘On The Table’?

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EU Politix is reporting UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as telling a plenary session of the EU’s Committee of the Regions that London is “strongly committed” to finding agreement on the EU budget before the end of 2005. He is quoted as saying “We can not change agriculture in the short term.” and “We have put our abatement on the table. It is not the best way to spend European money”. If confirmed at the actual summit this would be news. This is also being linked to the establishment of some kind of fund to offset the industrial impact of globalisation and offshoring.

However I remain sceptical both on whether there is this dis-connect between the budget and agricultural reform in reality (remember opening talks with Croatia was not – *definitely not* – linked with the agreement to start negotiations with Turkey) and about the advisability of the UK taking this approach. Still, maybe this has something to do with it.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".