Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The UK’s Renegotiation: Keeping Up Appearances

Paul De Grauwe 4th February 2016

Paul DeGrauwe

Paul DeGrauwe

How far does the UK’s draft renegotiation proposal go in reforming the country’s EU membership? Paul De Grauwe writes that the deal is largely an exercise in keeping up appearances, with most of the agreed terms making little substantive difference to the UK’s terms of membership. He argues that rather than pretending to have achieved real reform, Cameron should follow a strategy of asserting that remaining a member of the EU, as it is today, will be good for Britain.

A deal between the UK Government and the European Union is in the making. According to Prime Minister Cameron, the deal represents a victory for Britain. It achieves his objective of reforming the European Union. He is now ready to defend keeping Britain in the EU in the upcoming referendum.

The opposition ridicules all this. According to the Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party, the deal achieved with the EU is not worth the paper on which it is written. The Eurosceptics promise to intensify their opposition against British membership of the EU.

Who is right here? Cameron, who claims to have achieved his objective of fundamental reform of the EU, or the opposition for which the draft agreement between Britain and the EU is just a bad joke? I tend to side with the Eurosceptics here. Cameron has achieved very little. Let’s go through the different points of agreement.

Cameron wanted to reduce inward migration from the rest of the EU by letting EU-migrant workers in the UK wait four years before they can enjoy social benefits. He will get it, but he will have to find a qualified majority in the EU to impose such a restriction. The idea that Britain could unilaterally impose this restriction (which was his initial demand) has been shelved. In addition, and more importantly, such a restriction will do nothing to stop immigration in the United Kingdom.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

EU-workers are attracted to the UK not because of social benefits, but because of the many job opportunities the UK offers. There are now more than 200,000 French workers in London. None of these have come to London to enjoy UK unemployment benefits that they can also get in France. These French men and women come to London because it offers so much more in terms of job opportunities than Paris does. The same holds for other EU-residents that are attracted to the UK. These people come to work not to benefit from British largesse.

Cameron wanted to be inscribed in stone that the UK will not participate in future programmes of “ever closer union”. Here, yes, Cameron got what he wanted. But what is the practical meaning of writing this in a treaty? The UK has already achieved the right not to be dragged into further union. It is not a member of the Eurozone. It does not participate in Schengen and maintains full control over its own borders. It was accepted by everybody that the UK would not participate in future unification programmes. This “victory” of Cameron is devoid of practical meaning. He could as well have asked that Britain shall maintain its right to speak English. He would have gotten this and it would have meant nothing.

Cameron wanted to transfer back sovereignty to the British parliament by giving it the right to veto future laws that are decided by the EU. He claims to have achieved his goals: the British parliament will have the right to veto this legislation if it can find a majority of 55 per cent among the EU parliaments. A closer look at this condition reveals that Cameron has not brought back national sovereignty to Westminster.

EU legislation is decided by the Council using a system of qualified majority voting. If the UK government sides with the majority the British parliament will also do. If the UK government is in a minority position in the Council and thus has to accept legislation decided by majority rule, it now has the possibility to let the British parliament oppose this legislation. But this can only be done by finding a majority of 55 per cent of national parliaments. It is hard to see how Britain will successfully be able to revoke EU legislation this way if it failed to block the legislation in the Council in the first place. Again nothing of substance has been achieved by Cameron.

Cameron wanted to ensure that the British taxpayer will not be forced to contribute into future financial rescue operations in the Eurozone. He got this. But here again the UK had acquired this right already. Britain was not forced to participate in any of the financial assistance programmes in the Eurozone.

Finally, Cameron wanted the EU to become more competitive by reducing the amount of regulation. Who could be against this? Every government in the world these days promises to reduce regulations. But inexorably, regulations increase everywhere because people want more regulation. They want healthy food, safe toys for their kids, drugs without toxic side effects, and so on. The deal reached by Cameron will not stop this dynamic.

Summing up: the deal reached by Cameron with the European Union is an exercise in “keeping up appearances” like in the famous British comedy series where Hyacinth Bucket, who insists her name should be pronounced “Bouquet”, constantly pretends what she is not. It would be wrong for Cameron to pretend he has reformed the EU, while he has not. Instead Cameron should follow a strategy in which he stresses that being a member of the EU, as it is today, will be good for Britain.

This column was first published by EUROPP@LSE


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Paul De Grauwe

Professor Paul De Grauwe is the John Paulson chair in European Political Economy at the LSE’s European Institute. He was formerly professor of international economics at the University of Leuven. He was a member of the Belgian parliament from 1991 to 2003.

You are here: Home / Politics / The UK’s Renegotiation: Keeping Up Appearances

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

HMPs,CMR,hazardous medicinal products,carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic,health workers Protecting health workers from hazardous productsIan Lindsley, Tony Musu and Adam Rogalewski
geopolitical,Europe Options for Europe’s ‘geopolitical’ futureJon Bloomfield
democracy,democratic Reviving democracy in a fragmented EuropeSusanne Wixforth and Kaoutar Haddouti
EU social agenda,social investment,social protection EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to wasteFrank Vandenbroucke
pension reform,Germany,Lindner Pension reform in Germany—a market solution?Fabian Mushövel and Nicholas Barr

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube