Brussels: The quest to prevent Britain crashing out of the European Union faces its moment of truth this week, with EU chief Donald Tusk touring key capitals in a final push for a deal at a crucial Brussels summit.
Many of Prime Minister David Cameron’s demands for reforms ahead of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the crisis-hit bloc still face opposition just days before the meeting on Thursday-Friday. Mr Tusk cleared his diary in the run-up to the summit for last-ditch talks in Berlin, Paris, Athens and other capitals to press key leaders for an agreement despite what he called a “very fragile” situation.
Mr Cameron, who met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hamburg on Friday, said he was confident of a deal although “I rule nothing out” if he does not get an agreement. Ms Merkel meanwhile said that her “wish” was to avoid a so-called “Brexit” in a referendum that is expected to be held in June.
Three years after Mr Cameron first demanded reforms and announced a referendum, the issue has come down to quibbles over a few words and sets of brackets in proposals that Mr Tusk unveiled last month. Mr Tusk’s meetings with Ms Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and others on Monday and Tuesday are meant to solve what EU sources said were “outstanding issues” after negotiators in Brussels failed to reach a breakthrough.
The EU will “lurch very much in the wrong direction” if Britain votes to leave in an in/out referendum, foreign secretary Philip Hammond warned Sunday. The British minister predicted that negotiations with other European leaders to secure a reform deal for the bloc “would go to the wire” at a European Council summit on Thurs-day and Friday. “There isn’t a deal yet,” Mr Ham-mond told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“We have to make progress, there are blanks in the text. “The text on the table recognises there can be a period of four years in which people are treated different. That is a major breakthrough in challenging one of the sacred cows of EU ideology. I don’t think that’s going to get resolved before Thursday,” he added.
“We’ve got a negotiation that will run through this week and I have no doubt that will go right to the wire.” Mr Hammond accepted that Britain might get “slightly less than we expect” in some areas, but stressed that European leaders “understand we have to have a robust deal if the British people are to vote to remain within the European Union.”
Meanwhile, Faced with the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union, London’s EU workers feel “depressed” and fearful of their place in the UK as the debate affecting their future swirls around them.
Will they need a visa? A work permit? Have to reach a points or salary barrier in order to stay? Pack their bags and leave? It is difficult to predict consequences and the government says it is not planning for the possibility of a British EU exit. But “uncertainty is very unpleasant,” said Roch Glowacki, 24, a trainee lawyer from Poland.
He came to London as a student in 2010 and saw his future in Britain, but is now worried. “The consequences of ‘Brexit’ could mean I will want to, or have to, leave,” he said, adding that London might lose its prestige outside the EU. As insurance, he and others like him are considering taking up British nationality. People who have lived in the kingdom for five years can now apply, though the process is getting harder.
