January 23, 2013

David Cameron's Europe speech – the key points


• Cameron said that if the Conservatives won the next election they would hold an in-out referendum on Britain's membership of the EU before the end of 2017. He had been dropping strong hints about including a referendum in the 2015 manifesto for some months, but his speech officially confirmed that, as well as details about the timing and a clarification that it would be an in-out referendum on membership, not just a referendum on whether or not to approve the new terms of membership.
• He set out his broad aims but avoided going into details about what he would demand as part of the planned "new settlement" with the EU. He did suggest, however, that the working time directive should be abandoned.
• He called for a full EU treaty renegotiation. But he said that if this did not happen he would seek to achieve the reforms he wanted through other means.
• He sidestepped questions about whether he would be willing to recommend a no vote in the referendum if he failed to achieved what he wanted in the renegotiation.
• He implied that, if the Tories had to form another coalition after the election, he would make a referendum an essential condition of a coalition agreement. There would be a referendum if he were prime minister, he said.
• He said he hoped a referendum would settle the issue of Britain's relationship with the Europe for at least a generation. There was a parallel with the need to have a referendum in Scotland to settle the independence question, he said.
• He insisted that Europe as a whole, and not just Britain, would benefit from the EU being reformed.
• He said the EU should abandon the commitment to "ever-closer union" included in its founding treaty.
• He dismissed the idea that Britain would do better being outside the EU, like Norway or Switzerland.
• He said "much more" needed to be done to make the European court of human rights more acceptable to Britain.

No comments: