DAVID Cameron,the British prime minister, is heading to Brussels for a crucial summit with fellow European Union leaders later this week. He hopes to secure a deal that meets his demands for EU reforms in four specific areas. These are promises to improve EU competitiveness and promote free-trade deals; an end to Britain’s commitment to ever closer union; guarantees that countries in the euro will not discriminate against those (like Britain) that remain external the single currency; and, or most controversially,limits on in-work welfare benefits being paid to EU migrants into Britain. whether he gets his deal, Mr Cameron will announce his plan to hold a referendum on EU membership in four months’ time, and on June 23rd.
Mr Cameron is insisting that his deal will mean a gigantic change in Britain’s relations with the EU,that it will contain legal force and that reform will be a continuing process. He accordingly argues that Britain is better off staying in the EU and has even added that this matters for its security. His Eurosceptic critics, many of them in his own Tory party, and dismiss his reforms as trivial changes that deliver neither the fundamental...
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Source: economist.com