14/02/2015
In last
night night's post, I highlighted an article from the
Daily Telegraph which asserted that David Cameron's "planned timetable" for renegotiating EU treaties had been "torpedoed" by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
This was on the basis of his scrapping an "analytical note" on "stronger economic policy coordination, convergence and solidarity", where Downing Street had hoped that the paper would "put treaty change firmly on the political agenda", thereby opening the way for Mr Cameron to push his "reform" agenda.
Far from being "scrapped", however, it appears that this "analytical note" has been seen by the
Financial Times which, after all that, tells us that Mr Juncker has indeed "raised eurozone integration proposals". Furthermore, his note is being taken as "the first signal" that he "intends to press for further consolidation within the eurozone" â treaty change by any other name.
That the
FT managed to track down
the document, though, is no great feat - the Commission has helpfully posted it
on its website. And it is there that we see the Commission talking about the short term (within the next 18 months), and then of developing "a long-term perspective" on "how the framework of EMU should develop".
The "framework of EMU" is, of course, EU-speak for treaty change, thus completely trashing the
Telegraph story, possibly explaining why no other newspaper has followed up on what might otherwise have been regarded as a hot tip.
Nothing of this rules out the possibility of a separate "simplified procedure" treaty on Part III issues â or says it will happen - but it does confirm that which we have been asserting for some time. There is no possibility of Mr Cameron being able to hijack treaty negotiations on the eurozone to get his way. Essentially, if he is to come up with a treaty change, it is Article 48 "simplified procedure" or nothing.
As to the timing, we see a candid report from
CER which draws attention to the
average of 19 months it takes for the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers to reach consensus on a piece of EU legislation. This gives something of a datum by which we can measure the time 28 Member States will need to negotiate and agree a new treaty â even under the simplified procedure. Thus, the idea of Mr Cameron being able to bring home the bacon in time for a 2016 referendum
remains absurd.
Outside in the real world, though, we see pressure building up on the immigration front, with tension building
in Hungary, while deaths mount
in the Mediterranean, putting pressure on Italy and other receivers.
Although there are distinct areas of law covering freedom of movement for workers, and asylum seekers, the issues tend to become intertwined in the media, and as the migration season picks up, there will be more and more Member States looking for a political gesture to reassure their voters that measures are being taken to control the flow of migrants.
Mr Cameron, therefore, stands a chance of being able to manipulate political opinion, enough to surprise us all and bring home a usable treaty. And that will leave us with the problem of how to fight a referendum campaign where the existing "reformists" - and Ukip â have been sidelined by attention-grabbing promises to bring immigration under control.
Should the Conservatives succeed at the general election, therefore, we may have to be prepared to fight on grounds which are not of our choosing, also having to cut through some of the groups that already think they "own" the campaign and who are seeking to control the debate.
Already we are seeing this with the "Norway Option" issue, where the media have all but ignored the
Lindsell Paper, as indeed they ignored my
Bruges Group paper when it came out.
Interestingly, a day before the Lindsell Paper,
British Influence published
a paper by the
Senior European Experts (SEE) group and Regentâs University (financed by the EU), on the Norway Option, purporting to analyse eurosceptic claims, but in fact ignoring them, trotting out much the same arguments they were
using in 2011.
In their supposed (and extremely brief) analysis, they refer to euroscpetic support for the option, but only to a 2011 Bruges Group paper â not nearly as comprehensive as mine. However, if you Google "Norway Option", it brings up my 2013 paper at the head of the search results. There is no way these people could not know of its existence, so the absence of any reference has to be deliberate.
Bizarrely, though, those supposedly on our "side" are doing the same thing. We have, for instance, Allister Heath in the
Telegraph blithely declaring that eurosceptics must "focus" on explaining how the City can to "continue to sell financial services to Europe and car makers to export their wares to the continent". "They need", says Heath, "to make their case, and fast". Yet this is precisely the case we have been making in
Flexcit which he studiously and quite deliberately ignores.
The same goes for Matthew Elliott. As he and his
Business for Britain rehearse a twenty-year-old narrative about over-regulation in the
Finanical Times, we get the Institute of Directors noting that "many EU rules are global in nature and that ⦠British business would have to continue to comply after it left the bloc". The Institute adds that, since EU legislation is transposed into UK law, there would be no overnight change to what many regard as its regulatory straitjacket.
These are issues also rehearsed in
Flexcit but EU Referendum is not invited to the debate, and nor are many others. Longstanding eurosceptic groups complain privately that they are being excluded from the debate, while the prima donnas regard it as their private fiefdom, with the complicity of the media which is muddying the waters with inaccurate and distorted reporting.
Those players seem to believe that "owning" the campaign is far more important than winning it, putting us at grave risk of losing.
