Eurozone: what is Cameron’s next move?
David Cameron is clear that he can’t stand in the way of the 17 Eurozone countries trying to sort themselves out in Brussels on Thursday/Friday. He’s also clear that he can’t come home on Friday with nothing to show for his acquiescence in a treaty change. His backbenchers will be “checking his bags at customs” one senior Tory said. How to square that?
There’ll be no more talk of getting powers back from Brussels, a pretty bold expectation given the speed the Eurozone countries want to work at and the lack of an appetite elsewhere for joining in that sort of exercise. There will be no referendum as there are no additional powers going to Brussels. What David Cameron will be looking for is assurances, possibly written into the Treaty revisions, that try to limit the chances of the 17 caucusing or ganging up on the other 10. He doesn’t want them making separate arrangements amongst themselves within the single market of the 27 which would effectively put up barriers against the “outs.”
On caucusing, David Cameron may seek some transparency about meetings of the 17. If they’re ganging up on others and/or straying into non-Euro policy matters, it would get out. (But he knows that transparency sometimes pushes the real substance of the meeting into private – Ecofin meetings have an on the record, open, on-camera segment of their meeting and so now tend to do the main business before that starts and read a few statements into the record when the cameras are whirring.)
On the single market, David Cameron doesn’t want to see the 17 going for enhanced cooperation between themselves which effectively puts up barriers to others. For instance, if the Eurozone decided, under the heading of “enhanced cooperation” to go for new engineering qualifications for Eurozone countries which weren’t shared with all 27 EU members that would act as a barrier to non-Eurozone labour going to work in the Eurozone as engineers.
There’s not much David Cameron can do about the single market itself to be sure that the 17 don’t outvote him and impose, to him, unwelcome new rules on the financial industry and the City of London. But he’s looking for ways of limiting the potential mischief the 17 can cause as they get ever closer to each other and you can expect him to point to some words in the communique on Friday which he will say prove he has put down a marker and will get more flesh on it before any treaty change is passed by Parliament.
