But it is not clear what deal David Cameron can get, nor that British
voters will back him when he gets one
IT WAS described as a “make-or-break” moment for Britain and the European
Union. Yet, on the face of it, little happened at last night’s summit of EU
leaders to advance Britain’s renegotiation of its membership. There was no
breakthrough or compromise. The meeting shifted no one’s position. The summit’s conclusions merely noted that a “political exchange” of views had taken place,
and pledged further work before the next get-together, in February. Still, for
David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, it was a modest success.
For weeks Mr Cameron has been arguing that officials conducting technical
talks on Britain’s demands had got bogged down in details. Britain’s
renegotiation, he thought, particularly over migration of EU workers, needed a
political energy boost, and he would provide it. At meetings in recent months
he has pressed his requests on other European leaders. But last night offered
the first chance to speak to them all at once.
Over dinner Mr Cameron presented his 27 fellow heads of government with a
lengthy speech crafted for him by advisers in Brussels and London. He traced
the many changes in Britain since it joined the EU in 1973. He pointed to
growing unhappiness with membership among British voters, and his fear that, in
the referendum he has promised, they might vote to leave. And he urged those in
attendance to understand that a confluence of factors—the EU’s
freedom-of-movement rules, Britain’s open labour market, and its unusual
“non-contributory” welfare system, which provides generous top-up payments to
low-paid workers—was drawing an unsustainable number of European migrants to
Britain.
The point of this element of the renegotiation, says one senior adviser to
Mr Cameron, is radically to reduce the last of these pull factors. That
explains the prime minister’s preferred solution: a ban on in-work benefits for
migrants until they have toiled in Britain for four years. The trouble is that
almost everyone else in Europe sees that as nakedly discriminatory, and
therefore unworkable. Mr Cameron’s team insists that the four-year option
remains on the table. But in reality he knows he needs another way to meet his
goal of cutting immigration.
The difficult job of finding it will be left to the diplomatic “sherpas”
who must now get to work so that a deal can be struck at February’s summit.
(Donald Tusk, who as president of the European Council will broker the final
agreement, pledged last night to issue a formal negotiating text before that
meeting.) Many possibilities are doing the rounds. One idea floated by a European
Commission official is an “emergency brake” to be yanked (with commission
permission) when migrant inflows reach a certain level. This is modelled on a
decision that allowed Austria temporarily to stop German students from flooding
its universities.
Migration is the most vexing part of Mr Cameron’s renegotiation. But
Eurocrats point out that none of Mr Cameron’s three other “baskets” (sets of
demands) is easy. Britain’s call for clarity on the position of non-euro
members, for instance, raises eyebrows among euro-zone members who fear handing
London a veto over their own integration. The long-standing desire of countries
like Belgium to move towards stronger federal European governance conflicts
with Britain’s push for a greater role for national parliaments in EU
lawmaking, as well as with its desire for a carve-out from the treaty
commitment to “ever-closer union”. Even Mr Cameron’s motherhood-and-apple-pie
call to boost European competitiveness will be hard to translate into law.
Mr Cameron’s counterparts are pleased that he has displayed little of the
diplomatic bullheadness to which he is sometimes prone. The line he presents
is, at bottom, a simple one: help me keep Britain inside the EU. Behind it
lurks a flintier assertion sometimes trotted out by British officials: that
their demands on migration are far milder than the absolute cap on migrant
numbers Mr Cameron came close to demanding last year. (As Angela Merkel,
Germany’s chancellor, told him at the time, such a proposal would have been
dead on arrival.) Moreover, they note, discrimination on national grounds is
widespread in the EU, from limitations on voting rights to Denmark’s
restrictions on house-buying. Why should Britain’s problem not justify special
treatment?
Mr Cameron may be winning a little understanding for this view. But at home
opinion polls suggest a tight race, even if most British voters will only start
paying attention once the referendum campaign begins. Eurocrats in Brussels
speak of a “terrible trio” of EU-related referendums: a Danish vote on justice
and policing, lost by the government two weeks ago; a Dutch vote in April on an
EU treaty with Ukraine; and Mr Cameron’s in/out referendum, which will probably
take place next year. Officials fear, probably rightly, that such votes will
become opportunities to express generalised discontent.
The precise nature of whatever compromise over migration emerges is
unlikely to swing large numbers of British voters (though Mr Cameron's failure
to deliver on his promise of a four-year benefits ban will expose him to
attacks from Conservative backbenchers). Nor should it. Mr Cameron’s adviser
admits that even the four-year proposal might not lead to a big drop in
immigration. But that does not mean Britain’s renegotiation is entirely chimerical.
If he is to win his referendum, Mr Cameron will have to demonstrate to British
voters that the EU, despite its many problems, remains a club inside which they
can feel comfortable. That case would be easier to make if he had fought hard
for a deal and got his way. The substance may not amount to much. But the prime
minister is a talented salesman.
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