Britain faces an EU divorce bill of up to €20bn, says a Financial Times analysis that shows that the bloc’s shared budget is emerging as one of the biggest political obstacles to a Brexit deal.
More than €300bn of shared payment liabilities will need to be settled in the divorce reckoning, according to EU accounts. It is a legacy of joint financial obligations stretching back decades that Brussels will insist the UK must honour.
The sheer size of the upper estimate, which some EU officials reckon is too low, threatens to poison the break-up and derail a Brexit transition and trade deal, according to several senior European figures involved in the process.