EU capitals extend Cameron wary olive branch

By Pierre Briancon

Germany, France and others say they want to keep the UK in the EU – but not at any price.

PARIS — European capitals gave a wary welcome Tuesday to David Cameron’s demands for reforming the U.K.’s relationship with the EU — but warned again that migration could be a divisive red line.
The British prime minister sent a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk outlining four main areas that he wants to overhaul ahead of an In/Out referendum by the end of 2017. European leaders will discuss his plans at a summit in December.

The four main points of Cameron’s letter were already well-known — “what is on the table is no surprise,” German chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday. That allowed government officials in Berlin, Paris and other capitals to reiterate their long-held position: almost everything is negotiable, save for what’s not — in essence, the free movement of people within the EU.
As long as the expectedly tough negotiations haven’t started on the details of Britain’s request, EU leaders make a point of insisting they keep an open mind, and are ready to talk on most everything. Especially since a lot of what Cameron demands is already either already enacted, or in the works, or uncontroversial.
“We want to work on the proposals with a solution-oriented attitude,” Merkel said after Cameron spoke, adding that she was “reasonably confident” that a deal would be reached. French government officials refrained from commenting publicly, if only because, as a a diplomat put it, “we would only end up repeating what we’ve said before.”
Cameron’s speech drew little media attention in Paris or Berlin, as it was seen mainly as the ultimate summary of U.K. arguments often heard since British voters gave an absolute majority to Cameron’s Conservative Party in May’s general elections.
Officially, the French Brexit position was unchanged after the speech, and very similar to Germany’s: let’s keep talking, and try to keep the U.K. in the EU.
It’s been a long-standing view in Berlin and Paris that the U.K.’s membership in the EU helps avoid a dreaded tête à tête between France and Germany. Merkel needs the U.K. to help push free-markets ideas in Europe. Hollande knows that military cooperation between Paris and London is the backbone of any European defense. But both leaders want it be known that their preference for the status quo doesn’t come at any price.
The most controversial piece of Cameron’s plan — restricting welfare benefits for EU citizens — will depend on what exactly he has in mind. Berlin has already imposed a grace period on citizens from new EU members seeking work in Germany – the very kind of reform Cameron wants. And the aim of the negotiation will be to decide at what point the adjustments and changes the U.K. is pushing for are deemed contrary to the EU treaties’ spirit by other member countries.
Even though Paris and Berlin concede on that point, however, the migration question will be a major sticking point for Central and Eastern European member countries.
That’s true even of countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, which aren’t part of the eurozone, and where the British request to protect the interests of non-euro members within the broader EU are naturally supported.
With more than a million Poles in the U.K., talks on migration will be “difficult,” Konrad Szymański, the nominee to be Poland’s new European affairs minister, told POLITICO. “We will not agree to discrimination, but believe in a pragmatic solution to this issue.”


“We would like to understand this letter as not a problem, but a chance to renew the integration project,” he added.
The Czech Republic delivered a similar message. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said migration was “the most problematic aspect of the British initiative.”

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, which has opted out of the euro, took to Twitter to express his backing for Cameron.

“Good basis for concrete negotiations. It will be difficult. I hope we will succeed because we need a strong U.K. in EU,” he wrote.

The taboo of treaty change

Diplomats in other capitals expressed relief that the British prime minister didn’t use the letter to repeat an earlier threat to openly campaign for Brexit if he didn’t get the changes he wants.
Treaty change remains a taboo for France and Germany, but both have already accepted that they may need to agree to some legally binding changes that can be incorporated in the EU’s treaties at a later stage. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin had reiterated that message on Monday, even before the U.K. government’s official submission of its demands.
The question now is how much EU leaders will allow Cameron to claim victory whenever he goes back to U.K. voters and submit the negotiations’ results to the promised referendum.
A French diplomat privately raised doubt about Cameron’s assurances Tuesday that the vote would be the last one on the subject.
“The U.K. will always have one foot in and one foot out whatever the referendum’s results, and the question is sure to resurface in a few years,” he said. “So you have to wonder whether it’s worth going the extra mile, knowing that the question will never be fully resolved.”
French President François Hollande may have told the European Parliament back in October that “the only way for those who don’t believe in Europe is to get out.” But his entourage now insists that that was merely a reply to UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, who had spoken before him.