News
Good morning and welcome to your Unbound Daily Briefing - topics to be covered today include:
- European Commission Community Noted on X
- Germany Says EU Budget "Unaffordable"
- UK Government Concedes on Domestic University Fees
European Commission Community Noted on X
The European Commission account on X has found its recent post on small parcel customs duty in receipt of a community note, which highlights the errors within their posting regarding the costs.
The EC post stated that consumers in the EU will not be picking up the bill for the new duty, which is a temporary duty of €3 on all parcels from outside of the EU with a value of less than €150. The community note highlighted the fact, as the EU themselves pointed out during the imposition of tariffs from the USA, that these additional customs duties will be passed on completely to the consumer.
- Read the European Commission post on X
- Read The Guardian article on the customs duty coming into effect
Germany Says EU Budget "Unaffordable"
An internal government document seen by Reuters has revealed that the German government consider the proposed EU budget for 2028-2034 is 'unaffordable' and requires a cut of nearly 25% to make it affordable.
The proposed EU budget for the next seven-year budgetary period is just over €2 trillion, and the German government believes this requires a €430 billion reduction to make it affordable. The argument is that, even with the proposed reduction, the budget would still be a 27% increase on the previous budget of 2021-2027 - and would result in an annual membership cost of over €50 billion for Germany.
UK Government Concedes on Domestic University Fees
As was sadly predicted by members of our team some weeks ago when the EU Reset Summit date of 22nd July was announced, the British press are reporting that the current Labour government has made a further concession to the EU and agreed to allowing EU students to pay the much lower domestic rate for attending UK universities, instead of the higher international student rate. It is worth noting that a UK government spokesperson has said that they "do not recognise" the concession.
