UK Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday that there would be a “major problem” if a dispute over the demand for Britain to pay an extra €2.1 billion ($2.6 billion) toward the European Union budget isn't resolved, the Wall Street Journal reported.
At a news conference in Helsinki following a meeting with Baltic and Nordic leaders, the British prime minister reiterated the view that both the scale of the demand and the proposed timetable for payment by Dec. 1 was unacceptable.
While Mr. Cameron was in Finland, his Treasury chief, George Osborne, was at an Ecofin meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels where Britain’s surcharge- and those of some other European countries- is being discussed.
“The two elements that I said were absolutely clear was that we wouldn’t pay €2 billion on the first of December and we didn’t believe in paying anything like that amount. Those are the two issues I have put on the table. I hope they can be resolved at Ecofin—if they can be then that will be good, and if they can’t then obviously we will have a major problem,” Cameron said.
“But let’s let that negotiation continue and see if it reaches a conclusion today or perhaps later,” he said.