British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday described the new East European members of the EU as Britain's "allies" and said: "It is our duty to stand by them."
Defending his handling of the EU budget negotiations at last week's tense summit meeting in Brussels, Blair said Britain could be proud of the part it had played in the enlargement of the EU.
"To have championed the cause of these new states; to have welcomed them into NATO and Europe, and then to have refused to agree a budget that protects their future economic development would have been a betrayal of everything Britain has rightly stood for in the past 15 years or more since the fall of the Berlin Wall," Blair said in a statement to parliament on the summit outcome.
"They [the 20 new members] are our allies. It is our duty to stand by them. But it is also massively in our interest," Blair added.
The purpose of the budget was, rightly, to "transfer resources from the wealthier to the poorer east of Europe," Blair said.
He insisted that the EU had agreed on a "fundamental review" of all aspects of the budget, including the controversial policy of farm subsidies.
However, Conservative opposition leader David Cameron accused Blair of having "failed in every single one" of his objectives in the budget negotiations.
Blair had made major concessions on the British budget rebate and gained "nothing in return," Cameron said.
However, Blair said that "overall," Britain would get around 41 billion euros (US$49 billion) back from EU coffers over the next budget period from 2007-2013.
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