Cameron Advisor: 'We Need the Red Card to Stop EU Proposals'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/british-conservatives-on-eu-road-trip-to-tout-reform-a-944770.html



British Prime Minister David Cameron has threatened to withdraw his country from the EU should far-reaching reforms not be made. Influential Tory lawmaker Andrea Leadsom spoke with SPIEGEL ONLINE about the UK conservatives' demands.

Cameron Advisor: 'We Need the Red Card to Stop EU Proposals'
By Carsten Volkery in London
January 21, 2014 – 04:31 PM

It has now been one year since British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his intention to hold a referendum in 2017 on his country's European Union membership. By then, he demanded, the EU must have introduced far-reaching reforms. Otherwise, Great Britain might leave. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne repeated the demands last week.

British Conservatives believe that the power of the European Commission has grown too great. Cameron hopes to convince other member states to agree that some competencies should be withdrawn from Brussels and returned to individual member states. Exactly how he envisions the bloc's future remains unclear. Negotiations will only get started following the next general elections in 2015, assuming he is re-elected.

But the Tories have already begun the process of feeling out European capitals to determine who might be prepared to back which reforms. Several Conservative House of Commons deputies are serving as Cameron's unofficial emissaries. The group is called Fresh Start and they began their travels in countries which, they hope, will show sympathy with the British position: Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic. This week, they are heading to Paris. SPIEGEL ONLINE caught up with one member of the group, Andrea Leadsom, late last week.

~snip~

Leadsom: The free movement directive should be amended to put the decision about access to benefits back into the hands of member states. The intention of free movement was for those with a job, not for those without a job. It should be for member states to decide whether and when immigrants from other EU countries get access to education, health, housing and social assistance. That would be my starting point for negotiation.