UK should consider taking EU to court over £1.7bn bill, say senior Labour MPs

Britain should consider the case for taking the EU to the European court of justice over its unacceptable demand that Britain pay an extra £1.7bn in contributions to the EU budget, according to the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, and the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

The two men call for the tougher approach in advance of a meeting of EU finance ministers on Friday in Brussels at which George Osborne will try to build alliances to defer the demand for the payments on 1 December. There have been reports from Brussels that Britain may be offered the chance to pay the bill in instalments, but David Cameron has said he will not pay anything like this figure.

Writing in the Guardian the senior shadow cabinet figures argue: “The prime minister should be clear about whether he intends to take the EU commission to the European court of justice if they insist on the deadline of 1 December. If there is a legal case, there is no reason why Britain shouldn’t consider this.”

They add that there is a growing legal question over the basis on which the demand for the money is being made.

The basis for a claim may revolve round whether the European court of auditors believes the increases were examined properly by the commission.

Balls and Alexander insist: “This back-dated bill from Brussels is clearly unacceptable, and was presented in an unacceptable way. But the UK government is also guilty of having already made a difficult situation even worse.”

But they say Cameron is falsely suggesting he is isolated on this issue when in reality as many as nine countries that have been asked for backdated payments including the Netherlands and Greece have a shared interest in backing Britain’s case.

The two men suggest that Cameron needs to build a coherent case quickly in the face of evidence that some key potential supporters including the Dutch and Irish may be softening their stance. They also claim that even though Germnay stands to gain from the recalculations Angela Merkel is a potential ally. Her support may be fading due to a souring of UK-German relations caused by the prime minister’s increasing desperate rhetoric on Europe in the runup to the Rochester byelection.

They also suggest that while details of the UK’s backdated bill are looked into, the government should push in Brussels for a new agreement, not just over the total amount payable, but also how that interest is calculated.