An unregulated Brexit would not only hit Britain hard, but would also cost the remaining 27 EU members and companies billions in additional costs.
By the end of next year alone, Germany alone would have to pay up to 4.2 billion euros in the EU budget, reported the German spark media group today, citing calculations by the renowned Brussels Bruegel Research Institute.
Big budget gap
That would be the German share to compensate for a gap of 16.5 billion euros, which would arise in the EU budget from April 2019 until the end of 2020 in a British EU exit without an agreement, it says in a letter from the Bruegel Institute the German Bundestag, which is available to the newspapers. Britain is the largest net contributor to the EU after Germany. The additional costs for Germany are only about 200 million euros in revenues from the customs revenue.
The Brussels experts advise the EU to take a tough stance – if the UK does not comply with its payment obligations, this must be considered as a „hostile act“. Then the EU should not make Great Britain any concessions for necessary emergency measures for a hard Brexit.
The German economy expects a chaotic Brexit also with high charges through tariffs. The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) calculates an annual amount of three billion euros in customs duties that German companies would probably have to pay for exports to Great Britain. There would be another 200 million euros for customs formalities.
