Britse klim-down op verandering EU Verdrag open manier om te gaan

Kommentaar deur Denis MacShane

In a major climb-down by the new British government, the UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (Foto) now says that EU Treaty change is no longer a requirement for any final deal with the EU ahead of the 'In-Out referendum' which could now take place early next year.

Until now Conservatives have insisted that demands for controls on EU workers coming into the UK, their access to benefits, or special protection for the City needed to enshrined in treaty change to make them legally watertight.

Now in an interview in the Financial Times, Foreign Secretary Hammond says  that the UK  position  “does not mean we need treaty change”. This is a dramatic U-turn as the FT reported two days earlier that ‘David Cameron has insisted he needs an  EU treaty change before he can sell a new deal on Europe to the British people.’ According to the FT, the No 10 spokesman added: “He wants treaty change. All the advice that he has had is that treaty change is required, for example in terms of some of the changes that we want to see in welfare.”

Hammond was speaking in the margins of a conference in Turkey and it remains to be seen whether the Downing Street confirms the new line that Treaty change is no longer a demand the UK is putting on the table as part of its negotiations with the EU.

If so, it a major U-turn as all previous statements from senior Conservatives have insisted that the UK needs to get its demands enshrined in Treaty change in order to be legally watertight.

For example, limits on the free movement of EU citizens to work in the UK would mean a UK opt-out from the existing EU Treaties. So too, in the opinion of EU Commission experts on employment legislation, is the demand that all non-British employees should wait for four years before their employers get the low-pay subsidy that tops up poor pay for workers with families in British firms.

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This is different from payment of welfare allocations like unemployment, illness or child benefits where the European Court of Justice has recently made clear in a landmark ruling that governments have national discretion to stop so-called welfare tourism. Commission officials say that the Conservative demands contained in their election manifesto for a four-year waiting period for EU workers before getting wage top-ups would be discriminatory and thus illegal. If London is dropping its demand for Treaty change then this issue falls away.

Another key Conservative demand is for special protection for the City and other businesses as the eurozone develops its own rules which Eurozone member states decide are necessary to regulate banks and other firms operating within the single currency area.

David Cameron came a cropper in December 2011 when he claimed he could veto the creation of the European Stability Mechanism on the grounds that its was set up by the EU as a whole and therefore was subject to the UK veto.

The rest of Europe, including non-eurozone nations such as Sweden and Poland, were all keen to see the ESM in place and told the UK prime minister to stay in a darkened room and stop being silly.

But for the City, the idea that the eurozone can set its own rules which non Euro countries like the UK then have to obey is unacceptable. But without a treaty change, the legally watertight protection the City would like cannot happen.

Another demand that has been put forward by senior Conservatives like the former prime minister, Sir John Major, as well as all main business organizations like the Confederation of British Industry, the British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors is for a reduction of so-called Social Europe provisions to the UK.

These include directives on working time, some health and safety provisions, or the posted worker and agency workers directives. None of this can happen without treaty change similar to the Social Europe opt-out obtained by Prime Minister Major in 1992 at the time of negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty.

Again with Philip Hammond dropping the call for treaty change Social Europe provisions will remain in place.

EU leaders including the presidents of the Commission and Council, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk as well as all heads of government have repeated that treaty change is not on the cards ahead of the 2017 elections in France and Germany and indeed there will be no new treaty during the 2014-2019 period.

The UK policy reversal opens the way to some declarations and promises to put forward demands on different language in some future Treaty. The EU is undertaking its so-called Refit Progamme examining existing directives to see which need reform or even removal.

The UK government for a bigger role for national parliaments is supported by Frans Timmermans, the first vice president in the Commission. Cameron can enhance the status of the House of Commons on EU policy be obliging ministers to report to Commons committee before taking part in policy decisions in Brussels, by re-introducing Commons debates on Europe which were suppressed four years ago and changing Commons rules so that MPs can network with other national parliamentarians in Europe without facing sanctions and accusation of abusing parliamentary allowances ad expenses.

But with the Hammond U-turn on treaty change, if confirmed, the way is now open to a cosmetic form of words similar to that obtained by Harold Wilson in the so-called renegotiation that preceded the 1975 referendum which confirmed UK membership of the European Economic Community.

Whether this new approach leads to a Yes vote in the referendum which can now take place in 2016 remains to be seen. The British people have been told non-stop by Conservative politicians and most of the press this century that the EU is inimical to British interests. Today the head of JCB, one of Britain’s most successful contruction equipment firms, said he would be happy to see the UK leave the EU. As Jeremy Warner of the Daily Telegraph noted - to see Anthony Bamford, head of the family owned JCB, say Britain would be better off outside the EU is a major blow to the pro-Europe campaign.

To convert the Tory party and Rupert Murdoch, Anthony Bamford and the Daily Telegraph into champions of the UK staying in the EU without any treaty change remains a challenge.

Denis MacShane is a former minister for Europe and author of Brexit: How Britain Will leave Europe (IB Tauris)

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