Prime minister’s attempt to renegotiate terms of Britain’s membership will be blocked, says French foreign minister, if he is seeking special status.
France has issued a blunt warning to David Cameron that his plans to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership before an in/out referendum are a dangerous process.
In a sign of the deep unease in EU capitals as the prime minister embarked on a four-nation European tour, the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius warned that Paris would say no if the UK demanded a special status in the EU.
Fabius told the France Inter radio station: I find this process quite dangerous … The British population has got used to being repeatedly told: ‘Europe is a bad thing’, and the day they are asked to decide, the risk is that they will say well you told us: ‘Europe is a bad thing’.
The foreign minister wheeled out his favourite sporting metaphor when he said: One can’t join a football club and decide in the middle of the match we are now going to play rugby.
France would block any special status within the EU for the UK. If it is about giving a special status to Britain that gives it advantages for nothing, then the answer is no, Fabius said.
Even though we say yes to an improvement of the union, we cannot agree to its breakup. If such an important country leaves Europe, it will give an extremely negative impression of Europe.
The intervention by Fabius came hours before Cameron met the French president François Hollande on the first day of his tour of four EU capitals.
This began with talks in The Hague with his reform-minded Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, who has summed up the need to devolve power away from Brussels with the words: European where necessary; national where possible.
Hollande said he hoped the UK would remain in the EU and that it was in the interests of Europe and the UK to work together.
We talked about Great Britain’s place in the European Union, he said after meeting Cameron.
France wants Great Britain to stay in the European Union. There will be a referendum and it will be up to the British people to choose what it wants for its future.
David Cameron will present his proposals and we will discuss how we can go forward so the British people can be able to make a choice that works for them.
Hollande said this was just the start of negotiations and thanked Cameron for giving him some detail on his proposals.
The prime minister, who is outlining general thoughts before next month’s European summit in Brussels, is planning to demand change in four broad areas:
- Bar unemployed EU migrants from claiming benefits and force those who are working to wait four years before claiming in-work benefits. Ministers have been told that the restrictions on in-work benefits will have to be introduced through a revision of the Lisbon treaty.
- Hand the UK an opt-out from the ever closer union declaration.
- Ensure that EU member states outside the eurozone could not have changes to the rules of the single market imposed on them by eurozone countries.
- Give national parliaments the right to club together to block new legislative proposals.
Cameron insisted that his reforms were designed to benefit the EU as a whole.
After the hour of talks with Hollande, he said: The status quo is not good enough. I believe there are changes we can make that will not just benefit Britain but the rest of Europe, too.
My priority is to reform the European Union to make it more competitive and to address the concerns of the British people about our membership.
Cameron will continue his tour on Friday when he holds talks in Warsaw with the Polish prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and meets Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in Berlin.
Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, warned that Britain would vote to leave the EU unless European leaders agreed to a substantial package of reform.
He indicated that the negotiations could be wrapped up by early next year, but added: We expect that some of our partners will adopt a hard line at the start of the negotiations. That is how negotiation works.
The remarks by Fabius show that France is likely to adopt a tough approach and resist granting favourable terms to Britain which could, it believes, allow the UK to undercut French businesses in the single market.
Hollande has won Merkel’s support to deliver reforms to the eurozone within existing treaties.
Treaty change is a deeply sensitive matter in Paris, where Hollande led the Socialist party’s yes campaign in the referendum on the European constitution in 2005. He lost, while Fabius led the winning Socialist party’s no campaign.