That's simply not true, the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget. From https://eubudget.europarl.europa.eu/en/how-it-works/ :
The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.
I'm not sure I understand your comment tbh. Where does the money come from, if not from EU taxpayers?
> the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget.
My comment had nothing to do with that.
The page you linked has a question "How is the budget funded", which lists the revenues:
> Another difference between the EU budget and national budgets is that the EU lacks direct taxation power to finance its budget and instead relies on revenues called “own resources”.
> These revenues are:
> - Custom duties on imports into the EU
> - A small part of the VAT collected by each EU country
> - A contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic waste in each EU country
> - National contribution from each EU country based on its gross national income (GNI). All member states contribute according to their share in the combined GNI of EU countries. This is the largest share of the own resources.
I'd say all of that comes from the EU taxpayers.
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.
Yes, the UK government was a net contributor, but the UK government likes to concentrate its spending around London.
EU funding was specifically given out to poorer regions (like Wales) that were long neglected by their national governments.
Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
Now I am sure that Austria has benefited from EU membership, but this is not one of the areas.
The funds are less useful if they're in the hands of our government.
I like the EU flag. I do not like the billboards. They just do not look good. Plant an actual flag there instead? I'd prefer that!
