EU Investment Bank will honour pre-Brexit deals – but don't gamble on new ones happening

Re: Chemistry is fun

Co₂ CO₂

You can get it if you really try?

(once you get a certain amount of posts they enable HTML or something)

London Olympic fudget

By contrast we sort of managed to do the Olympics on budget and on time.

Yes, but in good part by pretending that the actual cost was the budget:

The original budget for the Games was £2.4 billion ($3.94 billion USD), but this was increased almost fourfold to about £9.3 billion ($15.28 billion USD) in 2007.[77] The revised figures were announced to the House of Commons on 15 March 2007 by Tessa Jowell.

The lesson here is that nobody has the monopoly on bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. Not even Brussels.

Re: Brexit bonus @ Dr Jones

"Try Googling "European Investment Bank" and "corruption" to get an idea of how much fraud and waste goes on. By contrast we sort of managed to do the Olympics on budget and on time."

Are you a Doctor of Bistromath?

If by "on budget" you mean an everchanging budget which magically meets the final price then yes, unfortunately thats not how budgets work.

All governmental organisations have levels of corruption from Parish councils upwards but try to erect an SEP around the Olympics (think G4S) isn't going to fly.

Re: Brexit bonus

Erm just because a project is funded by the bank doesn't mean its not managed by us. So your point is a bit off. Also I thought all our contributions were going to be spent on the NHS....?

Re: Brexit bonus

"The 34 billion is less than 3 years net contribution by the UK, and about 20 months gross."

Do you have a citation for that? Only asking because our net contribution appears to be at most £9.4 billion (2014) but as low as £4.3bn (2009) in recent history and more like 6.6 as an average. Estimates for total, direct net, contribution to the EU between 1973 and 2010 appears to be £77 billion. If that figure can be trusted (source UKIP) that EIB money is half our net contribution a mere 5 years ago?

Re: Brexit bonus

However you voted, managing the costs of building our infrastructure ourselves is one of the bonuses.

I note you omit the rather fundamental component of sourcing capital with which to fund the project you are wanting to manage.

As others have pointed out, there is no guarantee that the UK government will be able to or wish to fund the variety of projects that the EIB funds. Personally, and from my experience of government and EU funding, if my business was eligible for EIB funding, I would go for it whilst it was still available; there is no certainty that a UK government going through the trauma of exit and then finding its feet in the new world, will be offering anything other than bare minimum funding - and that is assuming that you can all the people who need to sign anything off around the same table at the same time, all with pens in their pockets and ink in the pens...

Re: yes but

"The impact on UK university research is major, as uk.gov was putting bugger-all in directly."

Yes, I think that's the biggest conundrum. EU money has been going to areas/places/orgs at EU behest, was it the right places and what will gov.uk do instead? Would gov.uk have invested in National Grid for example? Will gov.uk put science research money to good use?

My personal feeling is that despite the corruption in the EU, money has been spent in parts of the UK that a london-centric gov.uk would not spend money, or at least not as much. It's a real toughy to call.

Re: It's not the EU Investment Bank

Done right, leaving the EU could be fantastic for the UK. However you have touching faith in the UK's PTB given what's been going on over the past week.

Re: It's not the EU Investment Bank

The problem is the EIB is owned by the EU members; so currently the UK is one of the 28 shareholders.

So the real problems begin to arise when the UK exits the EU, as to whether any UK projec will qualifly for new funding, given the objective of the EIB is to fund projects that further EU objectives.

I'm sure Nigel et al will be quite happy to continue funding an institution that is devoted to furthering the EU... Particularly if all those companies that wish to relocate out of the UK into the EU get funds from the EIB to assist them... :)