mjr wrote:mercalia wrote:I understand that some legal opinion ( reported some time ago ) reckoned we owe them nowt, so maybe not black and white
One problem is that if we leave paying nothing then the EU would obviously pay nothing towards incomplete started projects in the UK and UK euro MP pensions, so there would be a welter of court cases in various directions as Farage and others asked for legal rulings on who pays their pensions and companies working on EU-funded projects try to recover what they've paid out (as EU projects tend to pay in arrears - sometimes long in arrears).
I expect there's been some estimation that £39bn is cheaper than the court case costs + probable liabilities from court rulings + bad publicity from the UK government being seen as shafting UK businesses and euro MPs.
Plus it sends a very strong message to all those other countries supposedly desperate to do trade deals with that if we change our minds about arrangements we'll just walk away and not met our obligations and leave them "in the lurch". They'd thus have to only agree to arrangements on the basis the UK would renege and thus need deals so biased in their favour it would be of no use to us.
Ian