ABSTRACT
The British contribution to the EU budget has long figured as a running sore in Britain’s relations with the other EU states. At a particularly contentious time in this saga between 1979 and 1984, the British Budget Question (BBQ) was sometimes referred to by Roy Jenkins, president of the EC Commission 1977-1981, as the ‘Bloody British Question’ (Jenkins, 1992: 491). This period culminated in the negotiation of a budget rebate (‘abatement’) by the Thatcher government in 1984, described as ‘the most long drawn out and bitter battle yet fought in the EU’ (Wall, 2008: 8), though possibly overtaken in that regard by deep-seated crises in the euro area since 2008-2009. In any event, the negotiation of EU budgets and the question of the rebate ever since have proved to be highly controversial matters.
