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The cynic in me says “because humans are like that”. For example, one elected UKIP official expected the EU to pay for a road in the UK after brexit.

Wouldn’t be surprised if either Spain or Catalonia now acts confused when someone puts an armed customs inspector on the border roads between them.



Not sure what you mean by "after Brexit", but the UK is a full member of the European Union. If the EU has current obligations to finance that road project, whatever that may be, then of course it has to fulfill them.


That would be far too sensible. I mean this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38153180

Which seems to refer to this: http://gov.wales/topics/transport/roads/schemes/m4/corridor-...

Which is currently “planned” and won’t start until next summer at the earliest.


Ha, thanks. To give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he did seem to be talking about Ireland more specifically, and about basically defrauding the EU (which he presumably doesn't like much). But yes, more likely he's just an idiot.


Was this David Rowlands, one of seven Ukip MPs in the Welsh National Assembly? Who, specifically, did he ask to pay for the road?


It was. The BBC reports he wanted to explore the “Trans-European highways fund” to pay through the Republic of Ireland.


I did a bit of looking, and it looks like that fund is also used for projects in non-EU member states. Further, if the UK has been paying into the fund, directly or indirectly, it would make sense for them to explore ways to get funding for their own projects before or even immediately after withdrawing from the EU, especially considering that the fund is already used in non-member states.


Hm, interesting.

I still doubt that fund would pay up, as my gut feeling says that in the event of UK leaving the customs union (current stated goal), then it would make more sense to divert shipping around the UK rather than use the UK as a bridge between two shipping ports for faster RoI-Continent transit.

But that’s just speculation on my part, I don’t know the rules by which it operates.




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