Factchecking David Cameron's speech on Europe, part II
Find our first factcheck here.
"Can we justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions?"
The European Union counts six executive agencies. They are set up for a fixed period, and their role is to implement specific programmes of the European Community.
However it is more likely Mr. Cameron was referring to the 38 decentralised European agencies, which include the European Environment Agency, the European Institute of Gender Equality, and the European Defence Agency. Their role is to implement EU policies.
Their total requested budget for the year 3 amounts to €772.2 million, according to the Draft General Budget of the European Commission for the financial year 2013.
"Can we justify a Commission that gets even larger?"
The European Commission is the cabinet government of the European Union. It currently consists of 27 commissioners, one for every member state. Since it was founded in 1957, the Commission has grown from 6 member states to 27.
Since membership is theoretically open to any European country "that respects the democratic values of the EU and is committed to promoting them" and implementing EU law, the Commission obviously has the potential to become even larger.
The EU has already granted 'official candidate status' to five states: Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Iceland and Turkey.
"Hundreds of thousands of British people now take for granted their right to work, live or retire in any other EU country."
Finding out how many British nationals reside in Europe is slightly tricky. Not every country collects data on the provenance of their migrant population, especially if they are EU citizens.
Eurostat regularly publishes figures on population by citizenship and country of birth for EU countries. However some of these stats are incomplete and out of date. Spain is one of the favoured countries for British expats, and according to the Spanish Institute of National Statistics as of January 2012, 397,535 British nationals lived in Spain.
Back in 2006, the Institute for Public Policy Research carried out a study on "Brits Abroad." It found that nine European nations have 20,000 or more British residents.
"Since 2004, Britain has been the destination for one in five of all inward investments into Europe."
The United Nations' 2012 World Investment Report - published in June 2012 - revealed that the United Kingdom is the top destination in Europe for inward investment. Indeed the report found that the UK is second in the world, after the USA, for attracting inward investment. The figures are shown in the table below, but they don't date as far back as 2004.
Since 2006 Europe received $3.28 trillion in inward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, the EU specifically received $3.08 trillion. The UK accounted for $616.7 billion of this.
To get 2005 and 2004, we need the 2006 UN World Investment Report, which also draws attention to the fact that in 2004 and 2005 the United Kingdom was the world leader for inward foreign direct investment, with inflows 65% higher than those of the United States.
Cumulatively speaking, since 2004 Europe has received $3.94 trillion in inward FDI, the EU $3.7 trillion and out of that the UK took in $837 billion. That indeed means roughly one in five of all inward investments into Europe reached the shores of the United Kingdom.
If you've seen any more claims in the Prime Minister's speech which you'd like us to factcheck, drop us a line at team@fullfact.org
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Flickr image courtesy of Maria Brianchon