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Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: EU wants us to pay its £60,000 pensions

agreed by the previous Labour Government

Monday April 25,2011

By Sara Dixon

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BRITISH taxpayers will have to stump up £170million to pay for an above-inflation increase to European Union staff pensions.

It will give the average retired official an income of over £60,000 a year.

Under austerity measures, millions of Britons currently face working years longer before they can retire on much-reduced pensions.

The revelation comes as the EU demands a 4.9 per cent increase in the UK’s contributions to fund its spending commitments. The increase will go towards paying for the growing £1.2billion pension bill.

Campaign groups who back the Daily Express crusade to get Britain out of the EU want the Government to rebuff the demands from Europe.

Last week Chancellor George Osborne said the European Commission needed to rethink its budget plan with a “much more realistic” proposal. The UK is unable to veto the proposal on its own.

Matthew Sinclair, of campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It is completely unfair that taxpayers in Britain are going to have to work longer and pay more for their own pensions and are expected to stump up huge amounts of support for gold-plated deals for Eurocrats.With so much pressure on the public finance and taxpayers here at home the Government should simply refuse to pay a higher contribution to the EU and insist that the EU should cut their budget just as it is cut at home. We absolutely should pull out of the EU and we must start refusing to play along.”

The cost of EU pensions is rising by four per cent while inflation in the EU is 2.6 per cent. If Britain pays the 4.9 per cent increase it would take the average British family’s EU contribution to £400 a year.

Mr Osborne has said the EU budget rise was agreed by the previous Labour Government. The coalition Government was “very clear” it was not satisfactory, he said.

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/242783/EU-wants-us-to-pay-its-60-000-pensionsEU-wants-us-to-pay-its-60-000-pensions#ixzz1McQAYRPd