03 February 2016

Financial Times: David Cameron has struck a flimsy deal with the EU

The prime minister will need all his political skills to persuade British voters that the draft deal he has struck represents the fundamental change in the relationship between Britain and the EU that he once promised.

Inevitably, it will be the proposed deal on welfare benefits for EU migrants that will attract most attention. The idea of an emergency brake on payments, should the UK welfare system be threatened by a surge of migrants from Europe, will be hard to sell as a dramatic change. That is because it represents the complicated culmination of a series of retreats.

Originally, Mr Cameron wanted an emergency brake on immigration itself. When it became clear that Britain’s European partners would regard that as unacceptable, he switched the subject to welfare, asking for a ban on the payment of in-work benefits to EU migrants. (The fear being that these are generous enough to cause a surge in immigration.)

When this too was rejected, Mr Cameron fell back on the idea of an emergency brake on welfare benefits. Even that brake, though, could be applied only with the agreement of a majority of member states — although there are reassuring words in the draft which suggest the EU may swiftly agree to allow Britain to pull the brake.

Mr Cameron would have liked to have come back from Brussels flourishing a deal that allowed him to claim that Britain had regained sovereignty on issues such as frontier controls and welfare benefits. Instead, he has secured a draft deal that threatens actually to underline the extent to which Britain can no longer act unilaterally.

Worse, even the current concession may yet be rejected by an EU summit on February 18, since the Polish government still believes that it threatens to legalise discrimination against its citizens, hundreds of thousands of whom live and work in Britain.

The rest of Mr Cameron’s deal looks more like useful tidying-up than a “new settlement” in Britain’s relationship with the EU. [...]

So does the flimsy nature of Mr Cameron’s deal mean that Brits should vote to leave the EU when the question is put, probably this summer?

Not at all. The point is that this renegotiation does not really affect the case one way or another. The economic and political case for Britain staying in the EU was very strong before Mr Cameron launched his renegotiation, and it remains strong afterwards — even if the results of the prime minister’s efforts are paltry. [...]

British voters must still decide whether it is in the UK’s interests to stay in the EU. The sooner the debate focuses on that fundamental question — and leaves behind the details of Mr Cameron’s “new settlement” — the better it will be for Britain.

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

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