The plushest of red carpets will be rolled out in Westminster this week for the arrival of Europe’s most powerful politician, the chancellor of Germany. David Cameron’s hope is that she will commit to helping him on UK relations with the European Union, cornered as he is by influential elements of his own party and by the United Kingdom Independence party. Will Angela Merkel ride to his rescue? My guess is that she would like to help but will only do so within narrow limits.
The Cameron position is to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and then have an in-out referendum by the end of 2017. Merkel will no doubt probe his negotiating position. For example, does he want to delete the goal of ‘ever closer union’ from EU treaties? Or does he want a UK opt-out from this? In either case, Cameron is likely to get short shrift.
He also hopes to restore the British opt -out from EU social policy negotiated by John Major. Particular targets are the working time and agency worker directives. Merkel might have some sympathy for that but she is in a grand coalition with the Social Democrats who will regard any such move as a blatant attempt to undercut good social standards. She will also be sensitive to the French government for whom social Europe is a fundamental part of the EU.
A more significant question for both leaders is migration and the impact of the free movement of labour principle since EU enlargement to the east 10 years ago. Cameron is targeting ‘benefit tourism’, migrants who arrive to claims benefits and not to work. There is little evidence that this is a problem of any significance but, by discriminating between UK citizens and other EU citizens, he is breaching EU law, a point Merkel may well raise. Migration nonetheless is an explosive issue in both countries, especially where migrants are alleged to undercut the rates of indigenous workers, not a point on which Cameron has been sympathetic to trade union concerns.
When I was general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, I had several meetings with Merkel. She is impressively down to earth and pragmatic. Refreshingly, she likes solving problems. But she has to date been more accomplished at national level than on the European stage and has struggled to be the imaginative leader that the eurozone, in particular, so badly needs. When a Marshall Plan was needed, Germany imposed austerity, and, six years on, growth is still worryingly low. Her default position is: ‘Why cannot the rest of the EU be more like Germany?’
I suspect that she will ask the prime minister why the UK’s economic model remains so unbalanced towards debt and financial services. Why does the UK collude with the banks to avoid EU curbs on bankers’ bonuses? And why the British opposition to a financial transaction tax? She may also want to know about the foreign office review of EU-UK competences. And what will the UK give up in any renegotiation with a particular target being the UK budget rebate? Negotiation is a two-way process.
So, will she help Cameron escape the clutches of the Europhobes in his party and in Ukip? Only, I suspect, if he turns on them and tells them straight – we are staying in Europe, working to make it better equipped to deal with the many real challenges, such as Ukraine and sluggish economic growth, rather than pandering to the latest burst of nostalgia from Nigel Farage and his admirers.
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John Monks is former general secretary of the Trades Union Congress and of the European Trade Union Confederation
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