Cameron: "Status quo in Europe is not working"

by N. Peter Kramer

The EU is these days completely focused on Crimea, Ukraine, Russia. Most outrageously of all EU leaders, is the president of the Liberals in the European Parliament, the Belgian Guy Verhofstadt who, overzealous as always, prepared his own list of names of Russian officials and oligarchs to be sanctioned by the European Union. His list would offer a much more powerful effect than the list of the EU foreign ministers, he declared…

But see, in the meantime British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote a serious and interesting article in The Telegraph about the future of the EU. He argues that the ‘status quo’ in Europe is not working and needs to change.  Seven ‘specific  changes’ he wants to make to the EU to stop the UK ‘sucked into a United States of Europe’.  The changes are controls to stop ‘vast migrations’ when new countries join the EU; tighter immigration rules to ensure that migrants come to work, not as tourists to cash in on ‘free benefits’; more power for national parliaments to block unwanted European legislation; more power ‘flowing away’ from Brussels to the national capitals; stop ‘unnecessary interference’ from the European court of human rights; business to be freed from ‘excessive interference’ from Brussels.  And last but not least abolishing of the principle of ‘ever closer union’ among EU member states.

David Cameron admits that his plan for ‘a new European Union’ is ‘ambitious’; ‘delivering it will take time and patience as well as strong relationships with our key allies and goodwill – not shouting from the sidelines’. However, strategists are concerned –and recent polls confirm these concerns- that UKIP  (UK Independence party, an anti-EU movement) will be the big winner in the UK of the European Parliament elections in May. What will probably have its effects on the next general elections.