David Cameron struggled at a European Union summit on Friday to overcome last pockets of resistance to a deal designed to keep Britain in the 28-nation bloc, with diplomats forecasting an agreement within hours.
“We are moving forward but we are not yet at a stage where a deal is almost done,” a British official told reporters after the British Prime Minister held all-night negotiations with top EU officials and a handful of leaders with specific objections to the draft text.
Cameron was hoping to fly home and chair a cabinet meeting later on Friday to endorse what he calls a “new settlement” with the EU, setting in motion plans to call a referendum on Britain’s future in the Union, probably for June 23.
The stakes are high for both Britain and the EU, with opinion polls showing voters almost evenly split.
The risks of Cameron’s strategy were highlighted on Friday when an opinion poll showed the campaign to leave the bloc had a 2% lead with 36% support. The TNS poll showed 34% of British voters wanted to stay in the bloc, 7% percent would not vote and 23% were undecided.
All sides at the summit said the toughest issue remained Britain’s drive to restrict welfare benefits for migrant workers from other EU countries, with east European states fighting to preserve the rights of expatriates already working in the UK and elsewhere.
Summit chairman Donald Tusk held a series of so-called “confessional” meetings with individual leaders to try to clear remaining obstacles in the meantime.
Diplomats said differences with France over London’s demands for a mechanism to protect its financial centre from intrusive euro zone regulation had been narrowed down to just two words.
Cameron has promised Britons he will exclude new European immigrants from in-work benefits for four years and cut child benefit for workers whose families remain at home.
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, representing that group, was battling to prevent the measures being applied to more than a million EU workers already in Britain and to avoid other countries piggy-backing on the child benefit cut.
However, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said his country too was keen to apply a plan to index child benefit for EU workers whose children remain in their native country to their home country’s cost of living if Britain won.
Cameron was keen to show British voters he was fighting hard to secure a deal which he has called “the best of both worlds”.
French President Francois Hollande, backed by Germany, has pushed for amendments to ensure Britain cannot veto deeper integration by the euro zone countries or give City of London banks a competitive advantage through regulation.
Britain is already the EU’s most semi-detached member, having opted out of joining the euro single currency, the Schengen zone of passport-free travel and many areas of police and judicial cooperation.
No country has ever voted to leave the Union. Britain is the EU’s second-largest economy and one of its two permanent members on the UN Security Council. Its exit would end the vision of the EU as the natural home for European democracies and reverse the continent’s post-World War Two march toward “ever closer union”.