UK taxpayers face extra £700m bill as EU swells budget

British taxpayers are set to stump up more than £10bn to cover EU spending in 2012 - almost £700m more than they paid in 2010, according to The Telegraph.

Defying Prime Minister David Cameron's repeated calls for austerity in EU spending, the European Commission will today issue a request for an extra £5.5bn (4.9%) for next year, swelling the Brussels budget to £117bn.

Britain's proposed £682m increase in contribution for 2012 means UK taxpayers will be paying more than £10bn to the EU at a time when the British government is making cuts, The Telegraph writes.

The government is under pressure to cut soaring British contributions to the EU budget after the publication of official figures last month.

These showed British taxpayers paid a total of £5.3bn to the EU in 2009, which increased to £9.2bn in 2010.

Cameron, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have all called for the EU to reduce expenditure in line with national cuts to public spending.

A senior EU official told The Telegraph the EU budget is an "anti-crisis package".

Last April, Cameron rejected an EU demand for a 6% increase in spending and called for a 0% EU budget freeze.

He lost a close vote over his austerity demand in July but then teamed up with Germany and France to limit the 2011 EU budget increase to a 2.9% increase.

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