EU reform? Where there’s a will there’s a way, says Merkel
Boost for Cameron as German stance softens
DAVID Cameron received a major boost in his bid to reform the EU yesterday, as Angela Merkel said she wanted to help Britain secure change. The German chancellor said altering European treaties was ‘not impossible’ and indicated she understood the UK’s concerns about migrants’ access to benefits.
On the prospects of reaching a compromise with Mr Cameron, she declared that ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’.
She added that Germany wanted to be a ‘constructive partner’ for Britain and ‘work very closely together’ on renegotiation.
Mrs Merkel’s encouraging words were in contrast to her previous pronouncements on reform. The chancellor and her f i nance minister Wolfgang Schäuble have been decidedly lukewarm on the issue, with Mr Schäuble telling George Osborne just a fortnight ago that he did not believe such a change could be achieved ‘very quickly’.
German officials have also privately spoken of their government wanting to humour Mr Cameron by not raising objections to his plans at this early stage. And although the Prime Minister was given a friendly hearing in Berlin at the end of his two- day tour of European capitals, he received a much frostier reception in Poland earlier in the day.
After discussing with Mr Cameron Britain’s concerns about welfare payments, Polish prime minister Ewa Kopacz’s office put out a statement saying Poland would oppose his plans to force migrants to work in the UK for four years before claiming benefits – the keystone of the negotiations – claiming it would amount to unfair ‘discrimination’ against Poles.
Chancellor Merkel struck her conciliatory note at a joint press conference in Berlin, saying: ‘Wherever there is a desire there’s also a way and this should be our guiding principle here as well.
‘Of course when you are convinced of an idea, you cannot say that treaty change is a total impossibility.’
Mr Cameron said he was ‘very heartened’ by her remarks. He believes that the changes he is seeking will require painstaking alterations to existing EU treaties, a prospect all but ruled out by Paris and Berlin in the past.
On Mr Cameron’s specific plans to curb benefits, Mrs Merkel said there were ‘abuses of free movement’ and suggested benefits could be a pull factor. ‘ Freedom of movement within the EU is a given, but we have very different situations’, she said.
‘We have minimum wages which v ar y dramatically [within the EU], and social benefits which vary starkly. Free movement has to be linked to the jobs issue, and how we strike a fair balance regarding social benefits.’
Germany has recently been taken to the European Court of Justice over benefits cases, including a decision to stop paying out to a jobless Romanian woman who it is alleged came solely to claim handouts. Mrs Merkel said they showed her government had ‘reason to change’ as well.
It is a remarkable turnaround from the start of this week, when Mr Cameron’s hopes of securing treaty changes seemed to have been dashed by the leak of a pact between Mrs Merkel and the French president that they could achieve the greater integration they are seeking within the eurozone without treaty change.