GERMANY
Angela Merkel is the EU’s paramount leader, Germany its dominant power. Merkel’s position, both in terms of what she will countenance and also as mediator, will go some way to fixing the outcome – but perhaps not as much as Downing Street thinks. Cameron gives the impression of betting that, if he wins over Merkel, it’s mission accomplished.
Until now Cameron has been shifty in detailing what he wants. In Merkel, he meets his match. She is cautious, non-committal and evasive. Last week the two leaders dined at Chequers, and Brexit was the main course.
Despite that, only days later, a senior source in Berlin said last Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels would deal only cursorily with the British question. There was nothing to talk about, he said, since “there haven’t been any negotiations”. This was a dig at the UK’s refusal to show its hand. On Thursday, Merkel said she wanted to reach a deal keeping Britain in. But she chose to emphasise what was non-negotiable – freedom of movement in the EU and discriminatory policies. That signalled rejection of two of Britain’s central aims: curbing immigration within the EU and suspending in-work benefits for new arrivals for the first few years.
Merkel, however, is acutely aware of the damage that Brexit would inflict. It would change the balance of power in the EU, and not in her favour. It would boost nationalist, anti-EU populist forces. It would entrench the sense that Europe today is just one big crisis without end.
FRANCE
François Hollande is Cameron’s most problematic figure. He doesn’t want Britain to leave, but he will be intensely reluctant to help Cameron’s Yes campaign by making concessions.
Hollande is France’s least popular president in decades. By the spring of 2017, when the UK referendum campaign will probably be at fever pitch, he will be fighting for a second term.
The French will resist any suggestion of reopening EU treaties to accommodate Britain, making it more difficult for George Osborne to settle the big question of the relationship between the 19 countries in the euro and those, like Britain, outside. In longer term, this is probably the biggest issue in the negotiations. But reopening the treaties could trigger a referendum in France, something Hollande was traumatised by a decade ago, when he led the Yes side in a referendum that rejected a European constitution. Hollande wants Britain to stay, not least because Brexit would be a triumph for Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
As on most big issues hobbling the EU, there will at some stage probably be an attempt by Berlin and Paris to agree a joint compromise position that becomes the basis for a deal.
The French were the first to go public in seeking to pin Cameron down. The day before Hollande went to Chequers, the Elysée Palace let it be known it wanted to see a “10-page” list of British requirements.
POLAND
Because European immigrants in Britain are predominantly Polish, Warsaw assumes an uncommonly big role on the issue. Cameron has acknowledged this by refusing to show his hand until after next Sunday’s general election in Poland, which looks likely to unseat the incumbent centre-right Civic Platform and bring in a new, if unstable, right-wing nationalist government.
After years of stable success unusual in contemporary Europe, Polish politics have turned highly volatile. The de facto leader of the nationalist right, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, will be a prickly and difficult customer for Cameron, despite that fact that the Tories and Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party sit together in the European parliament.
Blood is thicker than water and on these issues, national interest usually trumps ideological affinity. The Poles will have no truck with limitations on freedom of movement and will fight strongly against curbs on benefits for Poles in the UK.
Poland is by far the biggest of the quartet of central European countries that joined the union a decade ago. They are all increasingly asserting themselves in the EU, becoming the new awkward squad. Prime ministers Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico of Hungary and Slovakia and President Miloš Zeman of the Czech Republic are becoming loud, angry and unruly players in the councils of Brussels, with seldom a good word to say about the EU. The return of the nationalist right to power in Warsaw will complete the picture. For these countries, freedom of movement is one of the biggest benefits of EU membership. They will not give it up lightly. Britain championed their membership, not least to dilute Franco-German domination, but Cameron’s focus on discouraging their entitlements in Britain risks turning friends into foes.
THE NORTH
The smaller EU states of Scandinavia and northern Europe are a mixed bag with their own idiosyncrasies, although each is very keen to keep Britain in, and most are sympathetic to Cameron’s agenda.
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands increasingly veer towards UK-style Euroscepticism, albeit in different ways, while Belgium is more critical of the British. As the home of the EU institutions, Belgium is broadly federalist on Europe, although it struggles to keep its own national federation functional.
Historically, the Danes are the UK’s soulmates in the EU. Both countries joined in 1972, and the Danes secured similar opt-outs as Britain from the euro and the Maastricht treaty. Like the UK, the Danes enjoy exemptions from common asylum policies and on justice and home affairs. The nationalist, Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party will applaud any gains Cameron obtains restricting freedom of movement and on defending the non-euro countries against the power of the single-currency majority.
The Swedes are the very opposite, practising the most generous asylum and immigration policies – although there is a growing backlash. They will also support Cameron and Osborne on the euro issue.
The Dutch share with the British a free-trading, atlanticist orientation and are desperate to keep the British in, mainly for balance of power reasons. They are allergic to the merest hint of any Franco-German stitch-up.
THE SOUTH
The bigger Mediterranean countries – Italy and Spain – are less engaged on the British issue. Brexit would tilt the balance in their favour, with the Club Med of France, Italy and Spain then forming the three biggest EU states after Germany.
But there’s no sign of Rome or Madrid favouring this outcome. Secessionism, nationalism and populism are major worries for Matteo Renzi and Mariano Rajoy, the two leaders of the centre-left and centre-right. Brexit would be a big boost for anti-establishment mavericks in both countries. On the assumption that a British departure would reignite the momentum for Scottish independence, Rajoy is anxious about knock-on effects in Catalonia.
IRELAND
Ireland is a special case. Northern Ireland, the border, the exposure of the Irish economy to Britain, the history, the connectedness all mean that the Yes campaign will have no stronger supporter in the EU than Dublin. Quite simply, Brexit would be a disaster for Dublin and a British departure would have greater impact on Ireland than anywhere else in the EU.
BRUSSELS
As home to the European commission, the European council and the European parliament, and the venue for the summits that will settle the Brexit question, Brussels will play and is already playing a big part in the game.
The lawyers and the Eurocrats have long been on the case. Since July, British officials and a special team appointed by Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, and headed by Britain’s top Eurocrat in Brussels, have been meeting weekly to explore the limits of the possible – poring over legal texts, rehearsing what may or may not need to go before the European parliament. It is British vagueness in these talks that has brought to the fore recent expressions of European exasperation, forcing Cameron to pirouette and promise his written list.
The commission is guardian of EU treaties and the initiator of legislation, so the question of what is legally possible and what new laws or amendments might be required fall within its remit.
Cameron tried and failed to stop Juncker becoming commission chief last year. The two will never be allies. But it is unlikely that Juncker will engage in any score-settling, driven by grudges. In naming Jonathan Faull to head the commission negotiating team with Cameron’s aides, Juncker appointed a committed European who on no account wants his native country to leave.
Another influential figure behind the scenes is Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, the new secretary-general of the European Council. A Dane broadly sympatheticif not to all of Cameron’s campaign then certainly to keeping Britain in, he is also playing a key role, reporting to Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister, who chairs summits as president of the European council. In the end, Cameron’s deal will be settled by EU summitry. Tusk will have to finalise a package that satisfies everyone. He appears utterly committed to keeping Britain in Europe. Tusk takes the view that Brexit would be a disaster for Britain, but an even bigger calamity for the EU as a whole. His final package when it emerges, possibly in December but probably later, will be pitched in non-national terms as a good deal for all of “Europe”.
Cameron’s document early next month will be sent to Tusk, giving him the first opportunity to circulate UK demands to the other 27 governments and start negotiating with them.
The results will be set before another summit close to Christmas.
View all comments >
comments
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion.
This discussion is closed for comments.
We’re doing some maintenance right now. You can still read comments, but please come back later to add your own.
Commenting has been disabled for this account (why?)