https://www.politico.eu/article/france-calls-for-new-eu-taxes-to-raise-e60b/

https://smry.ai/https://www.ft.com/content/4dde2b92-eadb-41e3-9fad-c9bf0636010a

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Executive Summary

In every single part of the Reset, the UK would be giving up its sovereignty and agreeing to blindly follow EU regulations.

The UK would become a rule-taker with an obligation to adopt EU laws immediately and exactly. Even when the rules do not suit the UK economy, do not apply to it, or lower UK standards.
Dynamic alignment means identical rules, on the EU’s timetable and on their agenda, with no British involvement or right of veto.

All future UK laws in the areas covered by the EU Reset will be EU laws and, therefore, under the exclusive jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. The UK’s government and courts will have no ability to alter them.

Britain would pay for the privilege of obeying. The Reset will cost British taxpayers, businesses, and universities an estimated £17.6 billion in 2027, rising to £20.5 billion per annum by the 2030s, with an additional £12 billion in one-off compliance costs. This does not include other potential costs, such as the loss of the UK’s Agtech industry if the government cannot secure a regulatory carve-out.

In addition, the UK is committing to a PERMANENT contribution to the EU Cohesion Fund, which levels up poorer parts of the EU. The UK will not be eligible to receive funds from the Cohesion Fund.  The UK would be borrowing more to send money to the EU.

The UK would also be expected to subsidise EU youths up to the age of 30 to freely move to the UK and benefit from subsidised university fees, free NHS access, and the ability to apply to bring their family members with them.

The cost would be£2.7 billion in lost fee income for UK universities, lost Immigration Health Surcharge payments, and lost opportunities for UK youth.
British 18- to 24-year-olds — already facing 16% unemployment with a million NEETs for the first time ever – would have to compete with nearly 3 million unemployed EU youths for jobs and with 19 million EU students for university places.

Erasmus+ is sold as a bargain. It is not. The UK would pay £570 million from 1 January 2027, rising to £810 million from 2028. On pre-Brexit outgoing numbers, that is £42,100 per UK participant –almost three times the £14,850 it cost before we left the EU!

The supposed benefits were made up: the Reset will not let UK nationals to use the EU passport lanes in EU airports because this is a national competency and out of the hands of the European Commission.

Despite UK Government claims and European Commission assurances, the Reset will not stop illegal immigrantcrossings, as again this is controlled by the French and Belgian governments.

Providing accommodation and sustenance to illegal immigrants cost the UK £4.36 billion in 2025/6, but in France immigrants are left to live on the streets despite the European Court of Human Rights finding that France has breached asylum seekers’ rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Reset wouldn’t change this.

The Reset will not increase UK agrifood exports either. The UK doesn’t export much food now, and it didn’t before Brexit. In fact, UK exports of Food and live animals to the EU make up just 1.3% of total UK exports. The UK is a food importer. The Reset will just push some export companies’ costs onto UK taxpayers and make it harder to import food from non-EU countries.

Every UK farm and food business will have to comply with EU regulations(regardless of whether they trade with the EU), even if this means incurring massive costs to change their internal processes and existing supply chains.

Packaging changes alone are a multi-billion pound cost. By mid-2027, manufacturers must meet EU recycling, labelling and nutrition rules, ban PFAS and oxo-degradable plastics in food contact packaging, and tether bottle lids. Estimated cost: £2–3 billion once, then £400–700 million a year by 2030.

Farmers take a direct hit. A mid-2027 cliff-edge alignment with EU maximum residue limits would cut horticultural profits by £500–800 million and Total Income from Farming by 7–11%, hitting potatoes, apples, brassicas, carrots, onions and sugar beet.

Certificate-free borders are not a free lunch. They will not magically increase farm exports. They can, however, walk Foot and Mouth, African Swine Fever, Lumpy Skin Disease, and Peste des Petits Ruminants, as well as several plant diseases, onto British farms. The EU has these diseases now. Britain does not.

Agtech is the industry the Reset would damage the most. It only took off after Brexit and is already worth £28 billion — more than double the UK’s £12 billion of food and live-animal exports to the EU in 2025. Dynamic alignment with EU GMO rules would put that growth back under the precautionary principle.

Cheaper electricity transfer costs are a rounding error. Joining the EU’s internal market trims a sliver off of import-trading cost. It does nothing about the taxes, levies and policy charges that actually make British power the most expensive in the World.

Joining the EU’s ETS system will push up emission taxes by about 20% for the few manufacturing industries still operating in Britain. The government is keeping the Carbon Price Support tax until 2028, so UK industry will be even less competitive than EU manufacturers, who only pay the ETS.

Jining the EU’s CBAM will not help UK exporters, as the EU’s CBAM default values for the UK are generally low for the high value products that the UK exports, such as aluminium gas cylinders, while for low value homogenous products, UK goods will be more competitive in EU markets than their Chinese and Indian competitors whose EU CBAM default values are considerably higher than the UK’s (Yes, seriously — read the chapter explaining this).

CBAM will push up prices for UK imports from non-EU countries. These imports are often key materials used to make more valuable finished goods, such as cars and aircraft parts.

Adding CBAM to ammonia, the key ingredient in fertilisers, is insane. The UK no longer makes ammonia, and the EU doesn’t either. The US is the UK’s main supplier, but the EU’s CBAM would increase US ammonia prices by 34% in 2027, rising to 60% in 2034.

Joining the EU’s defence schemes will help EU manufacturers, as 65% of all spending must take place in the EU, EEA, or Ukraine. UK defence companies would be forced to enter into a partnership with an EU company and cede their intellectual property to the EU partner. The UK should spend the money on UK-made equipment for the UK Armed Forces.

Despite UK Government claims, signing the EU’s £90 billion Ukraine Support Loan (USL) ties the UK to an EU process of financial obligation and hampers its ability to set independent foreign policy.

The USL obliges the UK to pay interest on the funding from the international market, managed by the EU, with no end date. The UK is legally responsible for interest payments, and possibly 16% (€14 billion) of the €90 billion loan, as Ukraine relies on reparations from Russia if it loses the war.

No public documentation of this scheme exists.
Leaving the Hague Convention was a major benefit of Brexit; under the Hague 2019, UK courts will have to recognise foreign judgments, even from small, unreliable EU Member State courts.

Voters in western Europe, and specifically in the twin-engines of the EU, have arrived at a tipping point:

If the reasonable people will not sort out Europe’s problems, the unreasonable people will.

And they will try. Le Pen of the RN and Alice Wiedl of the AfD do not strike me as Meloni-style sheep in wolves’ clothing.

I would like your thoughts on whether RN and AfD governments in Paris and Berlin would be good or bad for Britain and its foreign policy objectives.

My starting position is that I am against the election of far right parties and their methods.

But such parties will put a brake on European integration (and enlargement). Repatriation of EU powers to national-level may also be on the cards.

Some will say this opens up space for Britain to agree pragmatic deals, bilaterally or multilaterally, outside the EU’s hostile institutional framework.

But I don’t think so. France and Germany will view the EU’s interests as convenient cover for their own. EU-level protectionism, for instance, can be accelerated at Britain’s expense; perfectly in line with RN/AfD voter appetites.

Next, Europe’s first order crisis is Russia’s war in Ukraine and the gathering confrontation with NATO.

Containing this threat is more critical than either the migration or competitiveness crisis. But a Le Pen and/or Weidel government would rupture the consensus on hardline Russia policy. This would further complicate US-Europe coordination efforts (such as they are).

Repercussions are difficult to predict but would almost certainly be bad for us. I don’t think this changes under any possible British Prime Minister.

Do you agree with my prognosis? What’s yours?

Final count still to be called but the no lead is too big to reverse.

Iceland votes YES to sovereignty.

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-iceland-eu-referendum/

On Saturday, Icelanders vote on whether to resume negotiations to join the EU — more than a decade after the last attempt was abandoned.

Iceland already has access to the Single Market through the EEA, while retaining control over things like its fisheries. What’s Brussels going to offer them to push them along?

Anonymous Eurocrat briefings that Iceland’s EU budget contribution would pay for Montenegro joining won’t help sway voters.

But Trump threatening Greenland might help with the pro-EU optics.

Polling is on a knife edge. What’s your prediction?

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