Mr. Gary Tobin:

Without trying to get into too much of the detail, CPOR is calculated by looking at the gross operating surplus of non-financial and financial companies. This is a statistic which Eurostat produces. Then what happens is that a rate is applied to this total figure. At the moment the Commissioner is suggesting 0.5%. A member state would look at what their corporate profit figure under gross operating surplus was, multiply that by 0.5%, which would give a national contribution, and then each member state would have to pay in this money monthly to the European Commission. It is important to remember that this would not be something companies would have to pay. It is just another mechanism for countries to pay into the EU budget.