Risk of EU breakup is real, Tusk warns ahead of crucial summit
David Cameron scrapped a debate at the European parliament on Tuesday and scheduled a meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, amid fears that a proposed settlement geared to keeping the UK in the EU could unravel because of growing European objections to the concessions promised to Britain.
“This is a critical moment,” Tusk warned. “It is high time we started listening to each other’s arguments more than to our own. It is natural in negotiations that positions harden, as we get closer to crunch time. But the risk of break-up is real because this process is indeed very fragile. Handle with care. What is broken cannot be mended.”
The stark warning from the former Polish prime minister, who presides over the EU summit on Thursday and who has been charged with drafting the settlement rewriting the terms of Britain’s EU membership, came as east European leaders staged a mini-summit in Prague to hammer out a common position on the proposed British deal.
Bohuslav Sobotka, the Czech prime minister, who chaired the meeting of four central European countries – Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic – said they had agreed a position but that he would not divulge it before informing Tusk.
Tusk is expected in Prague on Tuesday. “We will all have to decide together, and where we cannot and will not compromise on the fundamental freedoms and values,” Tusk said.
Cutting welfare benefits for east European workers in western Europe is the main sticking point threatening to wreck a putative deal negotiated since last July and fine-tuned over the past fortnight.
Cameron’s central demands of freezing in-work benefits for four years for EU migrant workers in the UK and cutting child benefits for the same workers who leave their offspring at home have already been watered down in the draft agreement but remain unacceptable for the east Europeans.
They will accept the curbs, but only if they are limited to Britain and are not applied across the EU. This applies in particular to child benefits, which, at the moment, are not to be scrapped but indexed to east European levels.
The central European quartet will accept that for the sake of a deal with Cameron but do not want the UK special treatment broadened to apply uniformly across the EU. They also fear eventual knock-on effects in other areas of national social security systems in Europe.
It emerged that this is the key stumbling block for Cameron at the summit, although there are ample other issues still to be resolved.
“Indexation of child benefit will be at the core of the discussions” with Cameron on Tuesday, Juncker said.
Source: The Guardian