Elections in France and Germany mean lengthy EU treaty negotiations may take place in run up to 2015 general election
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Nicolas Sarkozy's tough re-election campaign means eurosceptic Tories will face a wait for EU treaty negotiations. Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters
Eurosceptic Tories are limbering up for a fresh battle over the European Union.
George Eustice, David Cameron's former spokesman, is drumming up support among the new intake of Tory MPs to demand the repatriation of a raft of powers from Brussels back to Britain. The prime minister's pledge this week to try and repatriate social and employment laws is seen as just a modest first step by Eustice's supporters.
The Eurosceptic Tories may be disappointed to learn that they are likely to face a long wait. Britain will only place its demands on the table in Brussels when large scale negotiations are held to reform the governance of the euro. These are not expected to begin until 2013 at the earliest.
As I blogged the other day, Cameron has abandoned traditional British fears about a "two speed Europe" on the euro. He believes it is in Britain's interests to strengthen the euro's governance arrangements. These would not apply to the UK but would have to be approved by Britain because all 27 member states have a veto in every treaty negotiation.
The negotiations may take at least two years, raising the prospect that they will run into the next British general election in 2015. The risk of an EU bust-up on the eve of the election is likely to strengthen the hand of Nick Clegg who warned Cameron earlier in the summer that the crisis in the eurozone was no time to demand Britain's "pound of flesh".
Senior figures in Whitehall believe the negotiations will be delayed because Nicolas Sarkozy does not want contentious negotiations before next May's French presidential election. It had been expected that the increasingly beleaguered Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, would also want to wait until after the next elections to the Bundestag in 2013. But in today's FT Quentin Peel noted what he called an "important shift in German thinking" when Merkel said:
Treaty change is no longer a taboo.
Merkel's remarks indicate she may countenance the start of treaty negotiations after the French elections. But there is still an expectation that she will want to wait until after the German elections in 2013 because the negotiations are likely to be fraught.
There is a growing consensus among the 17 members of the eurozone that the failure to enforce the growth and stability pact, which was meant to ensure discipline, shows the need for greater fiscal union or, at the very least, fiscal co-ordination.
But there is a fierce debate. The demonstrations on the streets in Athens show that the Greeks will not take kindly to receiving instructions from Germany, even if that is not technically the position. Germany, where voters are growing increasingly uneasy at having to bail out profligate southern EU member states, will be concerned about the accountability of the new bodies. Will the European Parliament be given a greater role? If that is the case, does that mean that MEPs from the ten EU member states outside the eurozone will have a say?
The negotiations will be difficult once they start. A look at the relatively straightforward treaty negotiations needed to place the European Stability Mechanism – the bailout out mechanism for the euro – on a treaty basis gives a taste of the wait eurosceptics now face:
October 2010: At a meeting in Deauville, Sarkozy accepted Merkel's demand for the ESM to be enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty.
March 2011: EU leaders agreed at their summit in Brussels to the treaty change.
2012-2013: Ratification process takes place in EU's 27 member states. Britain will not introduce the necessary legislation until the Queen's Speech which is not due until the spring.
So it will take three years to introduce the treaty changes to the initial euro bailout. But that was a relatively simple process because it was done under the Simplified Revision Procedure in the Lisbon Treaty.
Changes to the governance of the euro would probably have to take place under the Ordinary Revision Procedure of the Lisbon Treaty. This would involve calling a convention consisting of national ministers, national parliamantarians and members of the European Parliament. This would be similar, though not identical, to the lengthy process presided over by the former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, which delivered the ill-fated European constitution.
If all that looks a tad complicated, here are two extra thoughts to muddy the waters:
• There are four more treaty changes which have to be ratified by all 27 member states in addition to the ESM revision. They are Croatia's accession treaty, which must be ratified by 2013; the Irish protocol, which persuaded the Irish Republic to vote in favour of the Lisbon Treaty; the separate Irish amendment to the Lisbon Treaty, which allows every member state to keep their European commissioner; and the Czech protocol which persuaded the eurosceptic President Václav Klaus to sign the Lisbon Treaty. Cameron will not use any of these treaty changes to repatriate powers.
• Expect a battle in the coalition once the euro treaty negotiations begin. The Tories abandoned the following commitment in their manifesto when they formed the coalition:
We will work to bring back key powers over legal rights, criminal justice and social and employment legislation to the UK.
But the Tories did secure this commitment in the coalition agreement:
We will examine the balance of the EU's existing competences.
So the Tories will claim that there is an agreement to – at the very least – examine their key manifesto pledge once the treaty negotiations begin.
Posted by Nicholas Watt Friday 9 September 2011 20.27 BST guardian.co.uk
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