{"id":11723,"date":"2015-11-10T08:09:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T08:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=11723"},"modified":"2015-11-10T08:09:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T08:09:38","slug":"david-cameron-eu-reform-is-not-an-impossible-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2015\/11\/10\/david-cameron-eu-reform-is-not-an-impossible-task\/","title":{"rendered":"David Cameron: EU reform is &#8216;not an impossible task&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Reforming the UK&#8217;s membership of the EU will be a big, but not impossible, task, David Cameron is to say as he publishes a list of four demands later.<\/p>\n<p>The letter to the president of the European Council will pave the way for detailed talks among EU leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cameron has committed to negotiating a &#8220;better deal&#8221; with the EU ahead of an in\/out referendum by the end of 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Campaigners for Britain to leave the EU say talks on issues such as restricting EU migrants&#8217; benefits are a gimmick.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Europe minister David Lidington has said the government hopes to get a deal agreed as early as December, when a key summit of EU leaders takes place &#8211; but he cautioned that it was too early to guarantee exact timings.<\/p>\n<p>In a speech ahead of the letter&#8217;s publication, Mr Cameron will say four objectives lie at the heart of the UK&#8217;s renegotiations:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">protection of the single market for Britain and other non-euro countries<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">boosting competitiveness<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">exempting Britain from &#8220;ever-closer union&#8221; and bolstering national parliaments<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">restricting EU migrants&#8217; access to in-work benefits such as tax credits.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth said the issue of restricting benefits would be a &#8220;hard sell&#8221; as some countries feel that could discriminate against their citizens but it is an area the PM is committed to pursuing because it is the one that might address immigration.<\/p>\n<p>Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told BBC Breakfast the negotiations would be &#8220;arduous, long but very substantial&#8221; and he believed the prime minister would be successful.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">&#8216;Political imagination&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>Mr Cameron has said he wants the UK to stay in a reformed EU, but he has not ruled out leaving if he cannot secure the change he wants with the leaders of the 27 EU countries.<\/p>\n<p>His letter to Donald Tusk will be the first time he has set out in writing the details of what he wants to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>Around 40% of EU migrants who have arrived in the UK over the last four years &#8211; about 224,000 people &#8211; are supported by the benefits system, new analysis from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests. Of these, around 66% &#8211; about 148,000 new arrivals &#8211; receive in-work benefits.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Analysis<\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\"><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/cameroon-story.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11724\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/cameroon-story.jpg\" alt=\"cameroon story\" width=\"624\" height=\"232\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\"><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">By BBC political correspondent Ben Wright<\/h2>\n<p>Today is a significant step towards the EU referendum, which must take place by the end of 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The letter to the European Council is unlikely to be an itemised shopping list of demands. Instead it&#8217;s likely to set out the four &#8211; now familiar &#8211; objectives the government is pushing for.<\/p>\n<p>The most politically-charged &#8211; and potentially hardest to achieve &#8211; is restricting in-work benefits to EU migrants for a number of years.<\/p>\n<p>That was a Conservative Party manifesto pledge &#8211; and David Cameron is expected to repeat that commitment.<\/p>\n<p>The Vote Leave campaign said it expected David Cameron to get what he&#8217;s asking for because it&#8217;s a &#8220;trivial&#8221; list of demands.<\/p>\n<p>But as he lights the fuse for the next stage of intense, potentially difficult, negotiations to come, Mr Cameron will say the mission is big &#8211; but not impossible.<\/p>\n<p>The prime minister insists he wants Britain to stay in a reformed EU. Getting a deal that matches the billing will be crucial for his case.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"story-body__line\" \/>\n<p>In his speech, Mr Cameron is expected to say: &#8220;When you look at the challenges facing European leaders today, the changes that Britain is seeking do not fall in the box marked &#8216;impossible&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They are eminently resolvable, with the requisite political will and political imagination.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Alongside publication of the PM&#8217;s letter, Chancellor George Osborne will meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels as part of the renewed diplomatic push for EU reform.<\/p>\n<p>The Vote Leave campaign said Mr Cameron&#8217;s negotiating demands were likely to be &#8220;trivial&#8221; and that the only way for the UK to regain control of its borders and democracy was by leaving the EU.<\/p>\n<p>Labour&#8217;s shadow chancellor John McDonnell, meanwhile, has dismissed the PM&#8217;s position on the EU as &#8220;a lot of bluff and bluster&#8221; and more about &#8220;appeasing&#8221; some of his Eurosceptic backbenchers.<\/p>\n<p>He told the BBC that Labour&#8217;s position was that Britain should stay in the EU and &#8220;negotiate our reform agenda as members of the club&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cameron&#8217;s speech comes after <a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-34764730\">he told the CBI conference on Monday<\/a> he had no &#8220;emotional attachment&#8221; that would stop him backing a UK exit if his EU renegotiation failed.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Referendum timings<\/h2>\n<p>David Cameron is understood to want an early vote, but has already been forced to rule out holding the poll on 5 May 2016, the same day as national elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>There has been speculation the referendum could be held as soon as June next year &#8211; but Downing Street has dismissed this as &#8220;not true&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In a speech on Monday evening, Europe minister David Lidington said the PM&#8217;s priority was the &#8220;substance&#8221; of the talks rather than timing.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Lidington said: &#8220;He doesn&#8217;t want to hold up the discussions and agreement any longer than necessary but what he&#8217;s not going to do is to cut a deal which he is not satisfied with for the sake of a particular arbitrary deadline.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But he added that there would be &#8220;a few months&#8221; between the date of the referendum being announced and the poll taking place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reforming the UK&#8217;s membership of the EU will be a big, but not impossible, task, David Cameron is to say as he publishes a list of four demands later. The letter to the president of the European Council will pave the way for detailed talks among EU leaders. Mr Cameron has committed to negotiating a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}