So now it's blackmail?

The government (the grown up bits of it as opposed to the Lib Dem bit) are forever vacillating over the EU as they struggle to deal with those members who believe it's a good thing and those who love in the real world (for a given value of real world) hence the problems they are running into over repatriating or opting out of various regulations and renegotiating our way back into some others...
Express.

DEFIANT Theresa May last night signalled Britain is to start wrenching many of our powers back from Brussels at last.
The Home Secretary told MPs the Government is to opt out of more than 130 EU crime and justice measures including the controversial European Arrest Warrant.
Her statement, cheered by Tory backbenchers, was seen as the fi rst step in a major offensive to repatriate British sovereignty from Brussels.
It is also another symbolic stage in the Daily Express crusade to get Britain out of the EU. Mrs May said: “It is in the national interest that the Government has taken this decision.”
But senior Eurocrats were outraged and threatened to retaliate by hitting the UK with a huge bill for “administration costs”.

Bit of an overkill reaction from certain EU officials there you'd think, particularly if the government gets it into its head to say sod you if your going to be like that we're leaving (well I can hope) Still blackmail is not a particularly good idea, particularly if you're announcing it to all and sundry, especially as  all that's being done at the moment is talk and rhetoric. I'd almost have been prepared to put money on the government caving in on any opt outs as the various apparatchiks in the civil service moved heaven and earth to make sure we couldn't. Still, at least now our ministers will understand the true cost of defying the EU, blackmail and threats. Add to that various chicanery in referenda along with massive bribes to the MSM by way of adverts and a series of public works to up unemployment and you have pretty much got the general idea of how the EU works to suck you in and keep you there forever paying for its administration to live high on the hog off our wealth.
Just think, if it cost's us millions to get out, how much we'll save by not being one of them, the millions we pay in every day will stop, the millions they waste, the millions they give away to undeserving countries, and don't forget the millions they won't let us see that are hidden when it's time to see the year end books, remember them the accounts they can't find every year end.
I have no doubt in my mind that the money we'd save being out of their unaccountable funding, we could spend on the NHS, defence, roads, in fact everything we've missed out on since the government took us into the 'Common Market' in 1974.