'Post-Brexit, UK must pay for market access'

BERLIN: An ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the UK will have to pay into the European Union’s budget if it wants the single market’s advantages, diminishing Britain’s prospects for a low-cost solution after its vote to exit the bloc.

Juergen Hardt, a lawmaker who speaks on foreign policy matters for Merkel's Christian Democrat-led parliamentary caucus, cited the case of Norway, a non-EU nation that contributes to the bloc’s finances in return for market access.

The issue wasn’t adequately addressed in the UK’s campaign leading up to the Brexit referendum in June, he said. "If someone wants to benefit from the European Union single-market structures, he also has to contribute to the cost of that operation," Hardt said in an interview in Berlin.

"In Britain, before the referendum, nobody talked about that fact." Merkel and others in her government have repeatedly warned that Germany won’t let UK Prime Minister Theresa May pick and choose the EU's benefits once she triggers the exit clause and talks on a new relationship begin.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier joined Hardt in saying that the EU’s benefits come at a cost.