‘EU could pay Brexit bill to Britain’

London: The European Union could end up paying a Brexit bill to Britain instead of the other way round, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Saturday.

Asked if he believed that Britain might end up receiving a payment, Johnson replied: “I do, I think there are very good arguments”.

“There are assets that we share, that we have paid for over the years and there will need to be a proper computation of the value of those assets,” Johnson told The Daily Telegraph in an interview.

Johnson, one of the leading lights in last year’s Brexit referendum campaign dismissed as “absurd” the various estimates for the exit fee that would have to be paid by Britain, which some reports have said could be as high as 100 billion euros (USD 109 billion).

“They are going to try to bleed this country white with their bill,” Boris Johnson said, threatening that Britain could “definitely” walk away from the negotiations without paying anything.The payments that London must make to settle financial commitments made when it was a member are considered one of the most difficult Brexit issues and are a top priority for the talks. (AFP)