The €100bn Brexit bill is reportedly ‘legally impossible’ to enforce (Picture: EPA)

European Commission lawyers have reportedly admitted that the €100billion Brexit bill is ‘legally impossible’ to enforce.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, minutes of internal meetings of Brussels’s Brexit negotiating team reveal that lawyers had warned against pursuing the UK for extra payments.

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However, member states are still asking for €100billion – £85billion – from the Government, a hike of €40bn from the original bill.

In the minutes Nadia Calvino, the director general in charge of the budget, argued against hiking the bill.


She warned that Europe could not start ‘cherry picking’ which parts of the annual accounts it wanted to base its calculations on.

Jean-Claude Juncker called Theresa May ‘delusional’ (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

And in a separate legal memo seen by the paper, Brexit chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s team warned it would be ‘legally impossible’ to make Britain pay for farm subsidies after leaving the EU in March 2019.

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However, they appear to have been overruled.



A source told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘It was the clear view of the Commission that it would be legally impossible to defend the idea that the entire seven-year budget plan was a binding commitment on the UK, and that insisting the UK pay after Brexit would give them an excuse to walk.’

British government ministers will no doubt be pleased to see these revelations, who had already dismissed the massive bill.

Theresa May has repeatedly claimed ‘no deal’ with the EU would be better than a bad deal (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

Brexit Secretary David Davis told ITV: ‘We will not be paying €100billion. What we’ve got to do is discuss in detail what the rights and obligations are.’

Relations between the Government and the EU are at an all-time low after a famously negative meeting between Jean-Claude Juncker and Theresa May.

After the disastrous talks at Downing Street, Juncker accused the PM of being ‘deluded’ and ‘in another galaxy’.