And yes they did have special concessions (namely a currency opt-out, like Denmark, and a Schengen opt-out, like Ireland and I believe others), although the UK were far from the only ones that had special concessions. E.g. France has a roughly the same sized economy to the UK yet contributed billions less to the budget.
I’m not really sure why people act like the UK is the only country who had concessions. Various countries have all kinds of concessions, and the wealthiest ones typically had more, because they had the most political leverage.
The big ones are currency and the common agricultural policy. Schengen, meh, Britain is an island. There’s plenty of EU territory that’s not in Schengen what would be important is that Gibraltar joins the area for the simple reason that you can walk there.
The UK joined later.
And yes they did have special concessions (namely a currency opt-out, like Denmark, and a Schengen opt-out, like Ireland and I believe others), although the UK were far from the only ones that had special concessions. E.g. France has a roughly the same sized economy to the UK yet contributed billions less to the budget.
I’m not really sure why people act like the UK is the only country who had concessions. Various countries have all kinds of concessions, and the wealthiest ones typically had more, because they had the most political leverage.
The big ones are currency and the common agricultural policy. Schengen, meh, Britain is an island. There’s plenty of EU territory that’s not in Schengen what would be important is that Gibraltar joins the area for the simple reason that you can walk there.