MOSCOW (Sputnik) — UK’s withdrawal from the European Union will blow an annual 10-billion-euro hole in the bloc’s finances, EU budget commissioner Guenther Oettinger warned Wednesday.
"The departure of the United Kingdom alone leaves us with a revenue shortfall of minimum EUR 10 billion [$11bln] a year," he wrote in the EU Blog.
With new expenses on defense and internal security, the total figure could be twice as much, he said in the article, co-authored by EU’s regional policy commissioner Corinna Cretu.
The commissioners said there were two opposite "knee-jerk responses" to the upcoming shortfall, with EU’s net contributors urging to scale down ambitions and net beneficiaries telling the former to up their donations.
Oettinger and Cretu said, however, the optimal approach would be to make sure that every euro spent by Brussels provided "clear added value" and was in line with the EU’s spending priorities.
