Allister ensures Euro-sceptic voice is heard
28 November 2012
When the Assembly debated a Sinn Fein motion on EU funding TUV Leader Jim Allister was the only speaker to express euro-sceptic sentiment, asserting that EU regional aid was only paying back some of our own contributions, but with strings attached.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
“It will probably not come as a surprise to the House that I have a rather different take on the motion than most of those who have spoken to date.
“We, as citizens of the United Kingdom, should examine regional funding in the EU very carefully. The reality is that it is our money that we are looking to recover. That flows from the fact that the United Kingdom is a huge net contributor to the EU budget. There are limited portions of that budget from which we are entitled to recover funding. One of those relates to regional funding. However, when that funding comes back, it is not Europe's money or money that someone else has given to subsidise the United Kingdom — far from it — it is our own money that is returned, but with all sorts of constraints on it. We pay in that money, and Europe takes it upon itself to put conditions on how it can be spent, where it can be spent, where it will go and all sorts of other burdens. We are meant to be grateful and to speak about the largesse of the European Union in being so gracious as to give us back some, but only some, of our money. At the end of that budgetary process, we are still a huge net loser because our net contribution runs to billions of pounds. So I am not one of those who fawn over the generosity of the European Union. It is a fake generosity; it is a generosity with someone else's money. In most cases, it is with our money.
“The transport strategy is, by and large, an ill-conceived strategy from our perspective in the European Union. It is premised on a grand design that does not fit, suit or accommodate whatsoever the needs of a small community such as Northern Ireland. It is premised on notions of accentuating to the ultimate degree the removal of freight from the road and on to rail. That is patently unsuitable for Northern Ireland. It is premised on European highways, which, patently, are largely unsuited to part of an island.
“I am one of those who very strongly say that rather than chasing, with some sort of begging bowl, funds of a regional nature from the European Union, we should front up and say that regional policy is one of those policies that should be repatriated from the European Union to the member states. That would allow us to take of our own volition our own money and spend it as suits our needs rather than it being siphoned through a process in which much of it is diverted elsewhere, and the money that comes back does so laden with conditions such that it is largely useless to us.
“The motion is particularly futile. It does not grasp the nettle of the real detriment to a nation such as the United Kingdom in terms of regional aid. It would be far better addressing the basics. Instead of chasing around and lamenting the fact that the make-up of the policy means that it could not contain the sorts of things that some look for, we should face the bigger issue and recognise that regional policy should be repatriated from the EU. Indeed, our whole membership should be repatriated out of the EU. We would be far better out and standing on our own feet.”
