Will Angela save Dave?

Opinion by Denis MacShane

Another day, another warning. Two veteran Anglophile foreign ministers politely tell David Cameron that he should not raise his hopes that European governments can give him the concessions he constantly says he needs to go into his Brexit referendum proclaiming a major victory extracted from the EU.  

On the BBC Joschka Fischer, the best and most pro-British foreign minister Germany has had in recent years told Cameron not to expect concessions from Anglela Merkel. "Don't lose yourself in wishful thinking. Angela Merkel will do nothing which will endanger the basic principles of the common market, of the EU," Fischer warned the British prime minister.

There is a comfort zone belief in Cameron’s circles that Mrs Merkel will do anything it takes to avoid Brexit. To be sure she has no problems with easy-to-grant cosmetic demands such as agreeing that at some future date when there is a new EU Treaty – almost certainly after she has left office and definitely after David Cameron has left No 10  as he has pledged to do well before 2020 – the Brits can have their little annexe at the end of the Treaty saying the words in the preamble about an ‘ever closer union of peoples’ does not apply to Britain.

Read any of the EU Treaties and they are lots of little country specific paragraphs at the end which are added in to satisfy a particular demand of a country worried about domestic public opinion.

However Manfred Weber, the German MEP, who heads the Christian Democratic group in the European Parliament, has said that in exchange for Britain not being covered by the commitment to ‘ever closer union’ London would have to give up any right to veto moves by other countries in that direction.

Weber was speaking after visiting Prime Minister Cameron at Chequers. It is a sign of Cameron’s belief that the only other country he needs to talk to is Germany that he invites a German MEP not for a quick chat in Downing Street but a full-on Chequers tour and visit. It is doubtful if many British MEPs have had that honour.

Cameron now has to play catch-up as his decision in 2009 to break links with German and other centre-right parties grouped in the conservative European People’s Party federation has turned out to be an error. The Conservative Party’s main ally in the European Parliament has been Poland’s rightwing nationalist catholic Law and Justice Party. Its candidate has just won the Polish presidency but has made clear his complete opposition to Cameron’s insistence that the UK should be able to discriminate against Polish and other EU citizens by denying them equal pay with British workers for the first four years of work in the UK.

Cameron now has to build links with mainstream European politicians hence the invite to Weber. The German MEP wants to be helpful but also wants to trade. Cameron is opposed the closer union. Fair enough. But he cannot veto those countries that do want more integration.

One example of this is the joint paper produced by France’s young Ecnomics Minister, Emmanuel Macron and Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic Number Two in Germany’s coalition government. They call precisely for an integrated Eurozone with joint policies across a range of areas.

If the EU’s direction of travel takes this form it will mean the Eurozone nations adopting rules and regulation that will determine who trades and how trade is carried out especially by banks, and the financial services industry.

This is the City of London’s nightmare that they could face rules which they do not like and don’t want but over which London has no influence or any chance of preventing unilaterally by imposing a veto as has been generally the case up to now.

Weber’s offer of a trade – Cameron surrenders the UK veto in exchange for promises of opt-out in a future Treaty – makes sense in Berlin and Brussels. But is that what the City wants – London loses all influence over EU policy in the 19 Eurozone economies?

Another EU veteran, the Danish politician, Lykke Friis, who helped negotiate the opt-outs Denmark obtained after the Danes said No in their first referendum to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty says that unlike 1992 there is ‘no new treaty in sight.’ And he adds ‘Britain should tread carefully, asking for a binding accord only on matters that affect its own citizens,not those of other countries.’

This is Cameron’s dilemma. The Danish and Irish opt-out were purely internal matters. Cameron wants to remove rights from other EU citizens which in the view of both Fischer and Friis are concessions too far.

Yet without Treaty change, without offering to trade the UK veto for removing ‘ever-closer union’, without telling his party and papers like Rupert Murdoch’s The Times which carried a passionate appeal by the influential Tory writer, Tim Montgomerie, for an Out vote that he has won the right to impose caps or quotas on Italians or Romanians who come to Britain to work, how does David Cameron generate enthusiasm for a Yes to the EU he has spent a political career decrying and denigrating?

Denis MacShane is the UK’s former minister of Europe and author of Brexit : How Britain Will Leave Europe (IB Tauris)

Share this article: