Jeremy Corbyn and George Osborne have combined to remind Europe that London is now fully embarked on a turbulent, quickfire negotiation with Brussels that may see Britons vote next year to quit the European Union.
As Osborne was in Luxembourg on Saturday securing goodwill from eurozone finance ministers for his call for fair play for sterling, his Labour opponents in London were electing a new left-wing leader, Corbyn, who warns his support for continued EU membership is no “blank cheque.”
Three months after Prime Minister David Cameron was re-elected with promises to reform Britain’s relationship with the EU before a referendum by late 2017, Europe’s attention is consumed by its migration crisis.
But discreet EU-UK talks are now under way to define how and what to negotiate to avoid a “Brexit” that Cameron says he does not want and which would shake the bloc to its core.Meanwhile, The EU’s disarray on refugees is helping Eurosceptics in tight opinion polls.
The prospect of Labour turning cool on Europe and worries that ministers like Osborne are slow to spell out what Britain wants at the EU council table have stirred unease in Brussels.
EU officials close to the initial discussions said they were encouraged by the talks so far.
Negotiating teams
British negotiators have been meeting key officials since July at the European Council, the forum of governments headed by Donald Tusk, and in Juncker’s executive. Both sides call the dialogue technical talks, not yet real negotiations.
People involved say the British have explained their demands in broad terms and EU officials have responded with detailed questions requiring further clarification.
It will be up to Council chief Tusk to craft any deal that can secure political buy-in from all EU leaders.
British officials like to divide Cameron’s demands into what they call four “buckets”: competitiveness, sovereignty, “fairness” and migration. The first two, involving elements such as promoting free trade and markets and increasing oversight by national parliaments, are broadly in line with Juncker’s plans.
It is on migration, which Cameron has made a centrepiece of his political argument with his own Eurosceptic Conservatives, that EU officials see the greatest difficulty.
British officials say the problem is not with the principle of free movement of labour but with the scale of immigration.
But making working in Britain less attractive to other EU citizens – Cameron wants to make them wait four years before they get equal rights to in-work benefits – “looks blatantly discriminatory” to one senior EU official involved in the talks, and as such incompatible with basic treaties.
Treaty change
A further difficulty for Cameron will be to convince voters that any deal is legally watertight. He says that means at least legally binding promises to change EU treaties.
Other leaders are loath to commit to treaty change, saying the anti-EU mood in much of Europe makes winning ratification referendums in some countries highly doubtful.
British officials place some hope in German calls for change to treaties to help the euro zone withstand more shocks like the Greek crisis. London could have its own changes then, they say.
Much remains uncertain in the process, however. EU diplomats complain they have yet to see a written proposal for specific legislative changes Britain wants.
Cameron’s next moves may become clearer at his Conservative Party conference in early October and a regular EU summit two weeks later. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Union’s power-broker, has pledged to help – but not at the expense of EU principles.
