Pact out maneuvers UK PM Cameron and limits his ability to renegotiate terms of his country’s EU membership
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Francois Hollande, the French President, have reached an agreement to create a closer union within the bounds of existing European Union treaties.
The Franco-German proposals are to be put to an EU summit in Brussels next month, where british PM David Cameron is also to unveil his shopping list of changes needed if he is to win support for keeping Britain in the EU.
According to Le Monde, the agreement between Germany and France outlines reforms in four areas designed to tighten the political union among the single-currency countries – without re-opening the Lisbon treaty, the EU’s fundamental constitutional document.
Cameron has persistently called for a reopening of the treaties to enable the eurozone to integrate more closely while providing the British with a chance to reshape the UK’s relations with the EU and repatriate powers from Brussels.
The Franco-German initiative, likely to be endorsed by the 25 June summit, would definitively close the door on treaty renegotiation.
Le Monde, which first reported the Franco-German agreement, said it “shows that French and German leaders do not have much in common with David Cameron”.
On Monday, Cameron told Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, that the British people are “not happy with the status quo” and believe that the EU needs to change ahead of a referendum on Britain’s membership by the end of 2017.
Word of the agreement comes as the UK prime minister prepares to open negotiations with the French and the Germans on Thursday and Friday, ahead of the EU summit, about the future of the Eurozone.
Cameron’s diplomatic offensive will also take him to Denmark, Poland and Holland, starting Wednesday.
Juncker is preparing policy options for the June summit on how to integrate the eurozone fiscally and politically as it struggles to emerge from more than five years of crisis. The Franco-German proposals are likely to settle the direction of policy.
