The UK has liabilities of nearly EUR1.3 trillion by being part of the EU – including responsibility for the entire EU cash budget, and for the EU’s loans and guarantees. We are also shareholders in the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank, out of which the UK has loans in about the same amount as our shareholdings.
The good news is that, when we step out of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, we step out of all the liabilities relating to the cash budget, debts and guarantees of the EU itself, and are no longer obliged to be shareholders in the ECB or EIB: we can have our shareholdings cancelled in exchange for our taking over the EIB’s loans to ourselves, a zero-sum exercise.
We can step out completely from these liabilities, and we must do so and quickly. The EU, ECB and EIB – acting individually and in concert – are taking the most enormous risks and in huge quantity to bail out the Eurozone, and on our credit card.
