Senior Labour party figures are urgently discussing whether to match David Cameron's expected promise to hold a referendum in the next parliament on renegotiated British terms for EU membership.
Cameron
is due to make the commitment in a landmark speech by Christmas and
Labour will face pressure to say if it will do the same.
One
senior Labour figure said any such commitment now "would split the
party", adding it was better for Labour to argue in the short term that
the chief priority for Europe
was to sort out a system of governance inside the eurozone that worked,
and that boosted growth in Britain's chief export markets. Demands now
for a renegotiated relationship into those already fraught discussions
might backfire, senior party figures said. In the short term Labour
should hold fire on its position pending the 2015 manifesto.
But
the former Labour Europe minister, Denis MacShane, urged the party to
state now that it would hold a referendum if Labour formed a government
after 2015.
He said: "Labour should offer a referendum after 2015
but make clear we will not isolate Britain from Europe in the meantime
and we will campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.
"All David Cameron has done is send himself naked into every EU conference chamber between now and the next election."
Cameron's
stated position is that he wants Britain to remain in the EU, but on
new terms and in a more disengaged manner. A Foreign Office-led review
of the balance of competencies is under way and will form the basis of
British demands to the EU likely to be put around the time of the next
election.
As the 17 countries of the eurozone are forced to pool
more powers in response to the single currency crisis, the idea is that
the Lisbon treaty will need to be renegotiated to facilitate the kind of
changes being pursued.
That would supply Cameron with the
opportunity to try to redefine Britain's place in the EU, agreeing to
allow greater integration for those who want it in return for being able
to "repatriate" areas of policy-making from Brussels.
The Cameron
strategy, as seen from Brussels, is fraught with risk and uncertainty.
It is not at all clear that the Lisbon treaty will be renegotiated. In
an interview with the Guardian, the French president, François Hollande,
bluntly opposed the notion since it could necessitate a referendum in
France. Hollande, who strongly backed a Yes vote in the French
referendum on a new EU constitution in 2005, was dealt a blow by
France's rejection and is keen to avoid any repeat.
The Germans
have been the strongest advocates of treaty change and renegotiation. A
senior official said on Wednesday that Berlin felt it would be clear by
December that the Lisbon treaty would need to be reopened.
However,
there are moves to try to retool and reshape the eurozone while
avoiding a renegotiation. Many in Brussels fear renegotiation would open
a can of worms.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told
Cameron this week that she was not in any hurry to renegotiate the
treat, according to senior EU diplomats who say her call is a tactical
device aimed at securing her eurozone policy aims in a battle with the
French.
They are confident Berlin would back off on its demands if its aims could be achieved by different means.
There
is criticism of Cameron that if he tries to cherrypick the EU bits that
suit him and ditch the rest, others will be encouraged to follow suit,
inviting a chaotic and damaging free-for-all.
Hollande hinted in
his interview that he would prevent this from happening. While he
accepted that Britain would not join the euro and was generally "in
retreat" over Europe, he said: "The British are tied by the accords they
have signed up to. They can't detach themselves from them."
No comments:
Post a Comment