Two and a bit years too late
Much was made of how much money the UK sends to the EU during the Brexit campaign, less was made of how it was spent.
Well now you can quite easily find out.
Best for Britain, a Remain-backing pressure group, have built myeu.uk, an open source tool that overlays projects with financial support from the EU onto Google maps. In its first day since launch the site was viewed 100,000 times.
Type in your postcode and see what the Romans ever did for us.
Click on a pin to see the name of a project and how much money it received and when. There’s also a description written in the finest Euro-babble, representing one of the EU and Remain campaign’s biggest fall downs – explaining what it does in simple terms.
For instance: “In 2017, the EU provided THE BIKE PROJECT £43,613 as part of the Fostering inclusive, innovative and reflective European societies (08.02.03.06) programme.
“This grant was from the EU budget centrally administered by the Commission.”
The Bike Project is a scheme that upcycles second-hand bikes and donates them to refugees, which might be a better way of explaining things.
Best for Britain chief Eloise Todd told JOE: “The EU invests around £5 billion a year in the UK and with this app every community can see how they benefit from this money. This support means more jobs and greater prosperity in places up and down the UK.
“We hope that people will use the app and contact their MP – all this support is at risk due to Brexit.”
App designer Hope Thomas added: “The number and range of things the EU has funded around Europe really surprised us when we started to look at it, so we wanted to share it with other people.
“The reaction to the site has shown us how many people are affected by the work the EU has been doing.”
