EU activists spur Cameron’s renegotiation efforts
Jonathan Lindsell, 2 December 2013
Tory backbenchers and MEPs are attempting to rouse No.10 into action. It’s been ten months since Cameron’s ‘Bloomberg Speech’ promised renegotiation and referendum, yet the strategic contents of that new deal haven’t been fleshed out in the slightest.
The EU Fresh Start group, led by Andrea Leadsom, George Eustice, Chris Heaton-Harris, has the implicit support of William Hague. He wrote the foreword to their January 2013 Green Paper, ‘A Manifesto for Reform’.
The new mandate aims to establish ‘clearly and precisely how the EU must be reformed’. It opens with a mournful picture: ‘[T]he EU has reached a crunch point of sink or swim. Europe simply cannot afford, economically, to continue doing what we have always done, because Europe cannot afford financially to get what we have always got.’ It goes on to propose reforms under three sections: Competitiveness, Flexibility and Democratic Accountability.
Leadsom is optimistic about the chance for change. She points out the softening attitude of Germany and the Nordic countries, as The Economist writes on reviving the ‘Hanseatic League’. This follows the Dutch Subsidiarity Review earlier in the year, which opposed the idea of ‘ever closer union’. Fresh Start’s suggestions for renegotiation include debate-worthy innovations such as elevating the role of Europe Minister (currently David Lidington) to Cabinet, and improving Westminster scrutiny of European law.
The Mandate proposes two demand strategies: those that can be achieved under the current EU setup, and those requiring treaty change. Many demands are reasonable – the European Parliament itself is moving towards ending the Strasbourg travelling circus. However EU commentator Richard North argues that even the less ambitions set ‘hasn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell of making it to the negotiating table’, suggesting the grand strategy is to force an Out vote in a referendum after Fresh Start’s apparently reasonable proposals are rejected.
The Tories are leading members of the ‘Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists’ in the EU Parliament, along with Czechs and Poles. AECR’s leader, Daniel Hannan MEP, is also pushing for progress – ‘An open market, without tariff or non-tariff barriers…known as the European Common Market (ECM) . . . [with] no coercive powers to require its members to harmonise their laws . . . Free movement of people would remain a matter for national jurisdiction’.
This comes at a uniquely confusing point for Europe’s fortunes. Even as northern EU members demur and criticise, 300,000 Ukrainians have protested at their government’s deference to Russia and aversion to a closer EU association. Elsewhere, Latvia is to join the Euro currency on 1 January, despite all its problems. David Cameron is in China with Premier Li Keqiang, negotiating a trade expansion deal that he can’t sign. This at least distances him from his powerless floundering over Romanian/Bulgarian migration, and a growth in ‘PIGS’ migration in latest ONS statistics. A renegotiation strategy might be just the motivation he needs.