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| * Paul Waugh |
David Cameron is visiting his least favourite capital, but today he’s got to woo the very people he’s spent years either ignoring or deriding. Yes, MEPs have to be squared ahead of the Thursday summit, and they may or may not want to extract their pound, or kilo, of flesh.
No.10 got into a bit of a pickle at Lobby yesterday over the role of the European Parliament, which ever since the Lisbon Treaty has greater powers. As ever, the danger is of oversell. The PM insists this is a ‘legally binding’ deal (though that is disputed), but it is certainly not legally binding on the Parliament. Downing Street knows that technically MEPs can unpick his draft deal with other EU leaders, but believe that in practice that’s very unlikely.
Cameron has opted for private meetings with Parliament president Schulz, as well as other key group leaders (prompting Farage to call him ‘gutless’ for avoiding a two-hour debate with him and others). Jean-Claude Juncker gets a visit today too.
The concern ought not to be MEPs, but EU leaders themselves. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports the exasperation of many at the rushed way the UK package has been drafted. The last-minute glitches that will need ironing out include Eastern Europe’s worry over child benefit cuts. The Poles and others fear Cameron's crackdown will affect not just British payments but German ones and others too. (Stat alert: there are 100,000 ‘euro orphans’ in Poland, kids left at home while parents work in Western Europe, and 40% of Polish benefits to them come from Germany). And they want the curbs to affect only new claimants in the UK, not existing ones.
Traynor quotes Anglophile Finnish finance minister Alex Stubb complaining about Osborne’s plans to have a say over eurozone affairs: “The UK is one of the most civilised countries in the world with one of the most uncivilised EU debates.” With Donald Tusk tweeting his warning last night that “risk of breakup is real as #UKinEU negotiations very fragile”, maybe the tensions at this summit will be more real than stage-managed.
Way back in 2005 during the Tory leadership race, Cameron won vital Eurosceptic backing after telling the 1922 Committee he would pull the Tories out of the centre-right European People's Party. That decision has dogged him since in his relations with Merkel, but if he gets the EPP on board he'll say it was all worth it. Ditto his lobbying against Juncker may not ultimately have harmed this EU reform deal. In the end, Cameron knows the EU needs the UK as much as it needs the EU. That's the real Realpolitik.
No.10 got into a bit of a pickle at Lobby yesterday over the role of the European Parliament, which ever since the Lisbon Treaty has greater powers. As ever, the danger is of oversell. The PM insists this is a ‘legally binding’ deal (though that is disputed), but it is certainly not legally binding on the Parliament. Downing Street knows that technically MEPs can unpick his draft deal with other EU leaders, but believe that in practice that’s very unlikely.
Cameron has opted for private meetings with Parliament president Schulz, as well as other key group leaders (prompting Farage to call him ‘gutless’ for avoiding a two-hour debate with him and others). Jean-Claude Juncker gets a visit today too.
The concern ought not to be MEPs, but EU leaders themselves. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports the exasperation of many at the rushed way the UK package has been drafted. The last-minute glitches that will need ironing out include Eastern Europe’s worry over child benefit cuts. The Poles and others fear Cameron's crackdown will affect not just British payments but German ones and others too. (Stat alert: there are 100,000 ‘euro orphans’ in Poland, kids left at home while parents work in Western Europe, and 40% of Polish benefits to them come from Germany). And they want the curbs to affect only new claimants in the UK, not existing ones.
Traynor quotes Anglophile Finnish finance minister Alex Stubb complaining about Osborne’s plans to have a say over eurozone affairs: “The UK is one of the most civilised countries in the world with one of the most uncivilised EU debates.” With Donald Tusk tweeting his warning last night that “risk of breakup is real as #UKinEU negotiations very fragile”, maybe the tensions at this summit will be more real than stage-managed.
Way back in 2005 during the Tory leadership race, Cameron won vital Eurosceptic backing after telling the 1922 Committee he would pull the Tories out of the centre-right European People's Party. That decision has dogged him since in his relations with Merkel, but if he gets the EPP on board he'll say it was all worth it. Ditto his lobbying against Juncker may not ultimately have harmed this EU reform deal. In the end, Cameron knows the EU needs the UK as much as it needs the EU. That's the real Realpolitik.
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* Paul Waugh is the Executive Editor, Politics, HuffPost UK.
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