PM ‘GOT NOTHING OUT OF EU’

SENIOR MPS have attacked David Cameron’s handling of the European Union, saying he got nothing in return for letting eurozone countries proceed with a new fiscal union.

The European Scrutiny Committee denounced a new treaty of 5 European nations as ‘illegal’ and said Mr Cameron was right to veto British involvement.

But the committee has found that the Government failed to use its leverage to extract meaningful concessions.

A report published today has found that Mr Cameron and his advisers are acting in a ‘profoundly unwise’ manner by giving the project the green light.

The treaty will see 5 EU countries – all EU nations except the UK and the Czechs – submit to tough new spending limits.

But the committee found that the fiscal compact ‘does little towards solving the Eurozone crisis, other perhaps than providing some comfort to international markets’.

The UK Government first said it would be wrong for the 5 countries to use EU institutions such as the European Court of Justice to police the agreement, when they are supposed to be controlled by all 7 EU countries. But Mr Cameron gave ground last month, reserving Britain’s right to complain if the institutions are used in a way that would undermine the European single market.

The committee said that if the Government believes the new treaty is unlawful if should say so and extract something in return for nodding it through.

It concludes: ‘The Government has made clear that it has reservations about the legality of what has been done, but the question of what it intends to do remains unsatisfactorily unresolved.’

The Foreign Office declined to comment.