Mr. Gerald Angley:

The kind of information we can provide relates to our contributions to the EU budget as a whole. The way it works is that there is a principle of universality with regard to the EU budget of €1.2 trillion over seven years from 2021 to 2027. We make a contribution to the entire budget and the principle of universality means we contribute to all of it and we cannot pick and choose which bits we contribute to or rule ourselves out of one particular element. That is based on something we have discussed at this committee before, the own-resources system, which is the rules and mechanisms by which member states make their contributions. As members may be aware, we have become a net contributor to the European budget since 2013 due to the growth of our economy over the 50 years of our membership.

To be specific, we have calculated internally that if we extracted the ASAP fund, which is €500 million, and then applied the contribution key that is drawn from us, the rough figure of our contribution to this €500 million over the two years it applies is roughly €12 million. To put things in perspective in terms of the size of the security and defence element and the European Defence Fund within the EU budget, for the benefit of the committee's knowledge, the EU budget agreed to was some €1.2 trillion. The security and defence heading is the smallest heading of the seven in the multi-annual financial framework, and defence is only part of that. When we take the defence heading within that, it is less than 1% of the total EU budget over the seven years. If we take the ASAP element of €500 million, it is 0.04% of the total EU budget. I hope that helps the Deputy.