Brexit divorce bill: How much does the UK owe the EU?

The UK agreed to make slotxo a series of payments to the EU, as part of the deal when it left in January 2020, often called the divorce bill.

A big part of the initial bill was the UK's remaining EU budget contributions, covering the time up until the end of 2020, when things largely stayed the same.

How much does the UK owe?

Originally, the settlement was estimated to be about £39bn, but a lot of that was paid as the UK's regular contributions to the EU budget.

From January 2021, there was about £25bn left to pay by 2057, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), almost £18bn of which will be paid in the first five years.

In July 2021, Downing Street rejected an EU estimate of a £40.8bn total bill.

The government insisted the figure was between £35bn and £39bn.

In the early years, a lot of the payments will be paying for a share of spending that the EU committed to while the UK was a member, but has not yet funded.

Most of the money paid in later years will be contributions towards funding the pensions of EU staff.

Continuing contributions

The UK will also continue to make contributions to take part in three EU programmes for 2021-27:

• Horizon Europe research scheme

• Euratom nuclear research programme

• Copernicus, the earth monitoring project

As part of its participation in Euratom, the UK will also continue to be involved with the ITER project to use magnetic fusion to develop a new type of power plant.