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Cameron to Seek German Support on European Reform Cameron to Seek German Support on European Reform
(about 3 hours later)
BERLIN — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain planned to travel to Germany on Friday for what was billed as a cozy family gathering with Chancellor Angela Merkel at an 18th-century manor house, resuming a diplomatic overture to mend his country’s frayed ties with the European Union that was interrupted earlier this week by the death of Margaret Thatcher. BERLIN — David Cameron, the British prime minister, arrived here on Friday for what a German official called a “not purely routine” weekend visit that will include talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel aimed at demonstrating the close relationship between the two center-right leaders and a discussion of Britain’s future in the European Union.
Mr. Cameron, whose plan for a referendum on his country’s membership in the 27-nation European Union has set his country further apart from continental Europe, was in Spain on Monday when Mrs. Thatcher, 87, died of a stroke. He hurried home to oversee a bout of tribute and introspection about Mrs. Thatcher, also postponing talks with President François Hollande of France. Mr. Cameron is seeking to reschedule those talks in Paris, British officials said. Officials in Berlin and London said the meeting, which begins with dinner Friday and continues Saturday with wide-ranging talks at an 18th-century country manor outside the German capital, is an indication of the strong relationship between the leaders. Issues to be discussed include European reform, the upcoming Group of 8 summit, Syria and Iran, said Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party is increasingly reluctant to entertain closer ties with the European Union but he is seeking to persuade Europe’s most powerful leaders that he wants to remain in the bloc, provided it undertakes reforms that will lessen its influence on the national powers of its members. Mr. Cameron, whose plan for a referendum on his country’s membership in the 27-nation European Union has set Britain further apart from continental Europe, was resuming a diplomatic overture that was interrupted earlier this week by the death of Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister. He had been in Spain when she died on Monday, and he returned home to London for tributes.
France and Germany registered opposition to Mr. Cameron’s vision when he announced in January that he would hold what was called an “in-out” referendum on Britain’s membership if the Conservatives prevail in national elections scheduled for 2015. German officials said Britain could not “cherry-pick” the terms of membership while France said the bloc was not an “à la carte” offering. Both leaders will be accompanied by their spouses, a rarity for the intensely private Ms. Merkel, 58, whose husband, Joachim Sauer, seldom attends events with his wife. Asked why the chancellor had decided to make the weekend into a family event, Mr. Seibert said she and Mr. Sauer had gotten to know the Cameron family during a visit to the British prime minister’s official country residence, Chequers, in 2010. The gathering “demonstrates how tight our friendship and partnership with Britain is.”
News reports said Mrs. Merkel invited Mr. Cameron to travel to Germany with his family for the meeting Friday and Saturday at a government guesthouse in Meseberg, northwest of Berlin. British news reports said it was the first time Mr. Cameron and his wife, Samantha, had been invited to take their three children on a foreign diplomatic initiative. It has not always been so cozy. Mr. Cameron infuriated Ms. Merkel by removing British members of the European Parliament from the main center-right alliance there. She left him isolated at a summit meeting in 2011, when Mr. Cameron demanded concessions in exchange for supporting a German-inspired agreement on budgetary rigor. A new treaty signed by most other European Union nations went ahead without Britain.
The display of cordiality underlines Mrs. Merkel’s desire to prevent Britain from leaving the European Union, British analysts said. The talks are also to cover issues including Syria’s civil war and Iran’s disputed nuclear program in advance of a planned meeting in Northern Ireland in June of the Group of 8 powers, officials in both countries said. The Group of 8 includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. The European Union is also represented. But the British government has since increased its efforts to court Germany, and in terms of protocol, this visit breaks new ground. While Mr. Cameron’s wife, Samantha, has accompanied him to Washington, this is the first occasion on which the couple’s three children have joined an official visit. Supporters and opponents of Mr. Cameron’s efforts to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union agree that stronger ties between Britain and Germany will mainly be decided in Berlin.
In a joint interview with five European newspapers this week, Mr. Cameron called for a “flexible Europe where we don’t all have to do the same things in the same way at the same time.” Mr. Cameron’s pledge in January to win powers back from the European Union, then hold a referendum on continued membership, increased fears that Britain — always skeptical about the idea of European unity — was heading for the exit. German officials said Britain could not “cherry-pick” the terms of membership, while France said the bloc was not an “à la carte” offering.
“It is not a matter of cherry-picking. It is a matter of flexibility,” he said. Part of Mr. Cameron’s task this weekend will be to try to “detoxify the cherry-picking narrative,” said Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, an organization that wants to loosen British ties with the European Union.
He said a changed relationship with the European Union was needed to counter dwindling support among Britons for continued membership, which he described as “wafer-thin.” But the visit is important for Mr. Cameron mainly because his strategy is based largely on a calculation that Germany wants Britain to remain inside the bloc and will help it get some of what it wants. “Germany is the key country,” said Mr. Persson, who argues that with Britain outside the European Union, France’s relative influence would increase, as would that of the southern “Club Med” nations, which tend to be less committed to free markets and budgetary rigor than their northern counterparts.
Britain’s relationship with Germany is far less confrontational than in the 1980s when Mrs. Thatcher clashed frequently with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and opposed his plan to reunify Germany as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. “If Merkel loses Britain, then her game of politics of options — which she plays so well at home as well as abroad — will be undermined,” Mr. Persson said. “The question is the price that she will be willing to pay.”
Mr. Kohl, 83, was quoted in interviews this week as saying: “She was difficult, just as our relationship was difficult. From our point of view, this antagonism characterizes British policy on Europe to this day.” From Ms. Merkel’s perspective, the meeting comes at a time when Germany’s traditional covenant with France is under strain, as its president, François Hollande, positions himself as the leader of Europe’s center-left. “Hollande has not built the relationship with her that he has with the southerners,” said one European official not authorized to speak publicly. “She can see that in discussions on the future of the E.U., she may need allies like Britain and the Nordic countries.”
But he also referred to her as “one of the most exceptionally gifted prime ministers there ever was.” Germany views Britain as an ally on key questions of global trade and free markets, as well as a proponent of globalization, which helps strengthen Europe’s overall position in a globalized world. It has stressed repeatedly that it would like Britain to remain in the union, but not at any price.
Mrs. Merkel, who was born in the former East Germany, paid tribute to Mrs. Thatcher as “one of the great political figures of the 20th century” who “recognized the strength of the movements for freedom of Eastern Europe early on and stood up for them. I will not forget the part she played in overcoming the division of Europe and at the end of the cold war.” Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, another research institute based in London, said that there was possible common ground on reform of the union, but that the scope was more limited than many of Mr. Cameron’s supporters believe.
Mr. Cameron’s invitation to Meseberg reciprocated a visit by Mrs. Merkel to Chequers, the country residence of British prime ministers, in 2010. “Germany really wants to keep the British in the E.U., but not to the point of allowing the British to opt out of more areas of policy or to repatriate more powers,” Mr. Grant said.
The idea of “home” visits has not always produced success. Tobias Etzold, an expert on European integration with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said Germany would be reluctant to give in on the core values of European integration, a much stronger political idea on the Continent than in Britain. He warned that the push to go it alone, even if unsuccessful, could leave Britain isolated and weaken its position in Europe.
Mr. Kohl long sought to overcome Mrs. Thatcher’s suspicion of German intentions and persuade her of his credentials as a European, inviting her to his home at Ludwigshafen in southern Germany and offering her one of his favorite meals, made of pig’s stomach and other ingredients. “It is important that Great Britain understands that possible alternatives to full membership in the E.U. would hurt them more than it would hurt the remaining members,” Mr. Etzold said.
As one of Mrs. Thatcher’s aides, Charles Powell, later recounted, “her appetite seemed mysteriously to fade as the German leader went back for seconds and thirds” and, after boarding her plane home, “Mrs. Thatcher threw herself into her seat, kicked off her shoes and announced with the finality which was her trademark: ‘My God, that man is so German.'”

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Berlin.