Browse > Home / EU / Team Cameron’s Negotiations

| Subcribe via RSS



Team Cameron’s Negotiations

November 10th, 2015 Posted in EU by

I note with interest that team Cameron has been making a big thing of welfare exemptions as the ‘really difficult’ element of his renegotiation package. I’m not sure he’s right.

Two elements are fairly easy.

Boosting competitiveness – that’s just the normal business of the EU, and the pro-market crowd currently dominate the Commission. Since Cameron doesn’t have a deregulation shopping list, any trade deals or single market directives are going to be claimed as a win there. He’ll even be helped by grumpy pro-European socialists complaining about how well he’s done at ruining the EU in this regard.

Ending ever closer union (for the UK) – also easy. It’s a semantic point open to interpretation. It will not be hard for other member states to agree the UK (and others) can have a rewording at the next treaty negotiations to reflect their real relationship. A partnership of European nations, or something similar.

The welfare issue may not be as easy, but then the PM has built a ‘four-year exemption’ into his opening bid, which will no doubt be whittled down to 1 year and claimed as a mighty triumph. It is also an issue that has more to do with the design of the UK welfare system (based on residency not contribution). It would be very easy to exclude non-UK residents from immediate access to all welfare benefits if the UK had more of a continental style social insurance model. Cameron could get what he wants by reform at home. What happens here may end up being a bit of both.

What he won’t get is the 4 year deal without conceding something in return. Eastern Europeans in particular will not accede to something that is a naked bid to discriminate against their citizens. It will be interesting to see what he offers.

The most difficult elements though I suspect are more around the protection of the non-eurozone states from eurozone decisions, and any brake to EU Directives from National Parliaments. Not because these are particularly difficult concepts, but because they actually require a vast amount of legwork in the detail of treaties and Directives in order to implement.

Anything involving changing voting procedures and decision-making in democracies is difficult, and usually runs into a lot of vested interests when what you’re up to becomes clear. Think House of Lords reform as an example. Obvious, should have happened years ago, everyone agree’s the current system is rubbish, but few agree on what should replace it. I sincerely doubt Cameron has a magic associate membership formula that everyone will buy in to quickly.

Detail is not Cameron’s forte. It is on the other hand a speciality of the Commission and various insider groups who are going to run rings around the British if they’re not very careful to specify exactly what it is they need to change. And not leave loopholes.

The nearest equivalent we have to this element of the renegotiation is the English votes for English laws debate. There the Conservatives took one look at what would actually be required to put the matter on a statutory footing (a revision of several hundred Acts of Parliament) and ran screaming for a clever procedural solution.

They are unlikely to be able to pull that off in Brussels. Or if they can, it will be so flimsy, it will be an open goal for the Leave campaigners to shoot at. Not least because whatever is achieved will be an agreement in principle, not a real deal.

So I suspect Cameron is setting up welfare as the big ask because he can win something there, and the last thing he wants is to draw attention to the really messy constitutional reform process that will bore the public while motivating his opposition to scream betrayal and failure. We shall see.

Comments are closed.