U.K. Finds Way Out of Impasse on Ties to E.U.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/world/europe/britain-european-union.html

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LONDON — If he wins re-election next year, Prime Minister David Cameron has said he plans to renegotiate British ties to the European Union, then hold a referendum in 2017 on whether to stay in the bloc. But those plans hit a roadblock when Mr. Cameron called for a rewrite of the Union’s governing treaty — a tricky political process many other European nations want to avoid.

Now an influential group of country’s Euroskeptics, whose support Mr. Cameron needs, has pointed to a way out of this impasse by accepting that an early treaty change is neither likely nor necessary in order to change Britain’s ties to the European Union.

“We are not going to get full-blown treaty change on all these things by 2017,” said Tim Loughton, a senior member in a group of Euroskeptic lawmakers within Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party called the Fresh Start Project. “What we can do is a whole load of things that do not require treaty change, and there would be an understanding that treaty change will have to come in time.”

The shift is significant because Mr. Cameron made his referendum pledge under pressure from Euroskeptics within his party and after electoral gains by the upstart U.K. Independence Party, which wants to quit the European Union. Mr. Cameron knows that after any renegotiation of membership terms, he would need the support of the Euroskeptics to mount a convincing campaign to stay in the Union.

After holding talks with Continental politicians, Mr. Loughton and his colleagues have accepted that treaty change is off the agenda in the short term. Instead, Britain’s renegotiation could conclude with a political accord on the understanding that it would be written into the treaty the next time it is revised.

“The political cycle is difficult,” Mr. Loughton said in an interview this past week, adding that France and Germany are due to hold domestic elections in 2017. “What they don’t want is to be mired in treaty change things which would dominate their election campaigns.”

Asked if revamped British membership terms are possible without a treaty change by 2017, Chris Heaton-Harris, another prominent member of Fresh Start, replied: “The simple answer is yes.”

Mr. Heaton-Harris said several measures “which would fundamentally change our relations with Europe” could be achieved without treaty change. Others “wouldn’t have to be enshrined in the treaty” by 2017, he added, but the treaty change “would have to be coming.”

Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, a research institute favoring looser British ties to the bloc, said that the Conservative Party’s debate has adopted “a more pragmatic tone.” While big obstacles remain, a successful revamp of British membership terms is “an attainable goal,” he said. Mr. Cameron has not publicly abandoned his call for a new treaty though he did not mention it in a newspaper article last month which outlined some of his renegotiation objectives. His main goals include strengthening rules to allow a number of national parliaments — collectively — to block European legislation; restricting some welfare entitlements for immigrants from other European countries; and ending the European Union’s pledge for an “ever closer union” (at least for countries like Britain that are outside the bloc’s single currency zone). Getting agreement on the first of those objectives — giving national parliaments a “red card” to stop European legislation — may be the most difficult task. However, there is support from countries including Germany for restrictions on welfare entitlements for migrants, a move that does not contradict the right of Europeans to move between nations. “Sorting out benefit tourism isn’t a challenge to free movement,” Mr. Heaton-Harris said. Ending the bloc’s commitment to “ever closer union” might also be possible, judging by discussions over the preamble of a draft constitution for the European Union where such a move was contemplated. The draft document was ultimately rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Mr. Cameron also wants guarantees that protect countries, like Britain, that stay outside the euro zone. His government has already negotiated safeguards over banking supervision to prevent nations inside the euro zone from caucusing and outvoting those outside. “If you can extend the safeguard to the single market, so that the euro zone cannot outvote those outside, that would be a big win,” Mr. Heaton-Harris said. He added that, while he would vote “no” in a referendum on British membership in the European Union today, he could “certainly see a scenario where we get a deal that I believe is good enough for my country to stay in.”