ROME: Prime Minister David Cameron may need a promise of changes to European Union treaties to secure concessions he is seeking to keep Britain in the bloc but exploratory talks are going well, Europe Minister David Lidington said.
Cameron is seeking to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the bloc it joined in 1973 as the ‘in’ and ‘out’ campaigns prepare for a referendum on membership before the end of 2017.
Opinion polls suggest voters are almost evenly split, and crises in the EU over Greek debt and a surge of migrants may be turning some Britons against staying in the 28-nation bloc.
Cameron has said the renegotiation is “bloody hard work” and while he wants to argue for Britain to stay in a reformed EU, he is ruling nothing out if the concessions he wants are blocked.
“We have got technical talks going on between officials – they are mapping out various options for both the policy scope and the legal and institutional framework that will be needed to deliver any deals,” Lidington told Reuters in the northern city of Manchester where the ruling Conservative Party is holding its annual conference.
It was very important to have those technical discussions so the options are there for the leaders. So those (talks) are going well,” he said, adding that he had found a lot of goodwill among other EU states to reach a deal.
Lidington, 59, has been the junior foreign minister responsible for European affairs since 2010 and is an expert on the EU’s institutional plumbing, knows Britain’s partners well and is one of Cameron’s inner team running the renegotiation.
He would not be drawn on what a possible deal would look like but said a commitment to treaty change – a long and complicated process which others are reluctant to embark on – may be needed to make it legally watertight.
Cameron formally began his renegotiation with a brief summary of Britain’s objectives to other leaders at a meeting in Brussels in June and European Council President Donald Tusk has said leaders will discuss the issue again in December.
“I don’t know at this stage how conclusive that will be or whether it will just be an interim stage – obviously things like the Greek crisis and then the refugee crisis just eat up a certain amount of bandwidth,” Lidington said.
“If it is done by December fine, but if it takes longer than December then so be it and, you know, there is no panic about it,” Lidington said of a possible deal.