How the UK still benefits from EU funds

A centrepiece of today’s UK-EU summit is a new defence and security pact that will allow British defence manufacturers to bid for contracts from the €150 billion (£126 billion) Security Action for Europe fund.

As part of this “reset” with the EU, Keir Starmer is thought to have made “significant concessions” on European fishing rights in British waters, said The Times. Even so, not everyone was so keen to let the UK in, with France, in particular, “pressing hard” for a “Europe-first policy” on defence contracts, one diplomat told the newspaper. The debate over how much access British companies should have to EU funds is part of the delicate ongoing process of defining the UK’s relationship to Europe in the aftermath of Brexit.

Under the EU’s current spending framework, which runs until 2027, the UK is eligible for three major EU-run scientific programmes: Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community); the Copernicus space and Earth observation programme, and the Horizon Europe scientific research and innovation project. But the UK can only participate on “associated” or “third country” terms. This means we pay “an operational contribution” to each programme, based on the ratio of the UK’s GDP to the EU’s GDP.

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After the UK negotiated re-entry to Horizon, it was “catapulted to the top of the league” of 19 non-EU participants, said The Guardian. According to EU data, the UK’s 3,000 grants, worth €574.7 million (£500 million), are the most of any non-EU participant and the third highest by value. Overall, the UK was fifth biggest grant beneficiary, behind Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and France. British scientists are “over the moon” to be back in the programme.

After leaving the customs union and single market, we negotiated a free-trade deal – the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement – with the bloc. That means no duties are levied on the import and export of goods but the “time-consuming and sometimes complicated new paperwork” businesses now have to fill out when exporting to or importing from the EU has had a significant “negative impact”, said the BBC.

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