I put the policy at the heart of a speech I made on immigration in late 2014, saying we would restore the ‘workers’ element to freedom of movement. Right now, EU migrants could claim up to £600 a month in benefits. We had already limited that claim to three months. But in the future, I said, we would end it altogether. If a newcomer hadn’t found a job within six months, they would have to leave. EU citizens would have to be working for four years before they qualified for the main benefits. Plus we would bring an end to EU workers sending child benefit home.
Officials reminded me that, as with the cap, treating migrants differently to UK citizens would be seen by the EU as a direct contravention of free movement. But I wasn’t prepared to let it go. I thought it would be effective, it was fair (because it took account of the different nature of the British welfare system), and it would support rather than undermine the basic idea behind freedom of movement. It was also the approach the British people had voted for: one of our manifesto pledges was to ‘Control migration from the European Union, by reforming welfare rules’. And it was a big part of helping us reach the annual migration target – below 100,000 – that was also in the manifesto.
Freedom of movement had worked before. I was convinced that, with these changes, it could work again.
My next task was to convince twenty-seven fellow EU leaders, and the body of the EU, that they should accept the contents of my four baskets – and do so unanimously.
The period between May 2015 and February 2016 felt as if it was spent largely on board a series of ageing RAF planes. Various combinations of the key EU renegotiating team – Liz, Ed, Tom Scholar, Ivan Rogers, Nigel Casey, Daniel Korski, Mats Persson, Craig Oliver, Helen Bower – joined me, travelling from capital to capital, conference to conference and summit to summit. It would become the biggest diplomatic tour in recent history.
I turned up at leaders’ pet projects and obscure events. I visited non-EU countries’ conferences just to grab a word with their EU attendees. I went to places no British prime minister had ever visited. I hosted the biggest players – Merkel, Hollande, Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk – at Chequers. I ate my way around the continent. Indeed, over one forty-eight-hour period I had lunch in Rotterdam, dinner in Paris, breakfast in Warsaw and lunch in Berlin – and when I got home to Oxfordshire for dinner, Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, was there to meet me.
Wherever I was, my objectives were the same. Get them to agree to post-dated treaty change – the Danish Model. Explain the four baskets, and that I needed the main elements in each. Insist that I was serious about securing a better settlement in order to keep Britain in the EU. Warn of the risks of under-delivering and seeing the UK exit the EU altogether. Above all, get them to see the British perspective. Explain the prize: Britain secure in Europe, and Europe stronger with Britain.
The most important of the conversations started, of course, with Angela Merkel. From pow-wows at the margins of meetings to strolls through the Buckinghamshire countryside, she made it clear that she wanted to help. But it was also clear that she was distracted by the migration crisis. She welcomed the idea of post-dated treaty change, and was gradually softening on ever-closer union. She understood what we wanted on the euro, and while she fundamentally opposed it, she believed that compromise was possible.
She was more sympathetic than most towards my proposed changes to welfare, because Germany had been similarly affected by benefit tourism. But she was adamant that we had to find a way that was non-discriminatory. I assured her that we would make every effort, but impressed upon her: ‘If you force the British people to choose between a measure of control over who comes into the country, and staying in the EU, if you give them that binary choice, they will vote to leave the EU.’
The second-most important conversations were with François Hollande. He was amenable to my proposals for treaty change early on, and was open to the other proposals – except one: my proposal to allow non-Eurozone countries to challenge Eurozone decisions. It would remain a point of contention right until the eleventh hour.
Then there was Matteo Renzi: moderniser, reformer, friend. While I was centre-right and he was centre-left, we often seemed to be on the same side. And he wanted to help. But even he would not accept all Britain’s proposals. It was the assault on ever-closer union that was hard for the Italians to swallow. Anything that was in the Treaty of Rome was important to an Italian prime minister, he explained.
When it came to the leaders of the ‘Visegrad Group’ (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), all but Hungary were wholly, implacably, point-blank opposed to my welfare proposals (unsurprising, since 900,000 Poles lived in Britain, many on in-work benefits). The leaders of the Baltic states took a similar view. Yet all the meetings with them were cordial and constructive. The leaders of these countries appreciated the UK’s support for their independence from the Soviet Union and their membership of NATO. They wanted to help.
The Latvian prime minister, Laimdota Straujuma, even confided the unease she herself had about the scale of movement that had taken place. One-fifth of her country’s people were now living and working in the EU, with over a quarter of those emigrants going to the UK. There was a danger that with so many twenty- to fifty-year-olds emigrating, Latvia’s population was hollowing out. This was echoed by one of Poland’s senior ministers, who told Ed later that Poland’s leadership would be delighted with any solution that discouraged their people from emigrating. One in forty Poles lived in the UK; some places in Poland had become complete ghost towns. But politically they could not say this, and on the welfare proposals their reaction was the same: they couldn’t support them. Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania was, as ever, particularly scathing about my requests.
If anything, I seemed to make more headway with two of the men whose appointments I had so opposed a year earlier: the presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission.
I invited Martin Schulz to London, and made an enormous fuss of him. I took him to St Paul’s Cathedral for the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, at which our countries had been on the same side: I pointed out that nearly half of Wellington’s army spoke German. He liked that.
Jean-Claude Juncker enjoyed his visit to Chequers. The Commission president is treated like a head of state or government when he or she visits other countries. But British governments have always found it hard to see the European Commission as an equal partner, rather than the servant of the European Council and the nation states. A Chequers invitation helped to make an impression Juncker would appreciate.
For all that their leaders did to help, the Commission and the Parliament didn’t like my proposals. They even took exception to the proposals for greater competitiveness, believing they trespassed on their own competences. Some of the resistance I was coming up against was political: leaders were benefiting from playing hardball with the UK, particularly if they were on the other side of the left–right political divide.
Much of it was theological. Belgium’s Charles Michel opposed everything we were doing – he had a completely unbending view on Europe. For him, ever-closer union was exactly what the EU was about – and everyone had to sign up to it. It was the same with the Luxembourger Xavier Bettel. He referred to me as ‘brother’ because of the similarity in our looks. We shared dieting tips and exchanged presents. But for him, my renegotiation was heresy.
And a great deal of the opposition was institutional. If I was finding the leaders hard work, their officials were even worse. To them, I was a dangerous heretic stamping on their sacred texts. Often I would report back to Ivan or Tom after a tête-à-tête with a fellow prime minister, only to be told that their officials refused to accept what had been agreed. Merkel and Hollande, surrounded by officials deeply imbued with Brussels orthodoxies, were the worst for this.
Time and again I found there was a fundamental misunderstanding between
us about the issue of immigration. As Merkel put it to me: ‘You have low unemployment, a booming economy, you’re growing faster than most of Europe, there is no social crisis. And you are pulling in highly qualified labour, cheaply. Explain to me what the problem is.’
It was a real insight into how differently we saw things. Merkel and others just didn’t see free movement as immigration. As far as they were concerned, if you’re from inside the EU, you’re a worker. If you’re from outside the EU, you’re a migrant. Indeed, we were constantly told by the central and eastern Europeans that we were not allowed to call them ‘EU migrants’. They were ‘EU citizens’. In their eyes, ‘migrants’ were refugees from Syria and Iraq.
I had to explain that that was not how we saw it in Britain. I would start off with my pride in the multiracial democracy we’ve built, and explain that increasingly when it comes to immigration, race, ethnicity, religion and nationality figure less and less. For us, it was much more about numbers and pressure. Therefore, people saw free movement and immigration as essentially the same thing. Some of the libertarian Leave campaigners would go further, objecting to free movement precisely because it favoured (mainly white) EU migrants over (mainly black and Asian) non-EU migrants.
But quite aside from differences on individual items in the negotiating package, the thing I was picking up from most leaders was that they simply did not think Britain would leave. For them, the referendum was a ruse to get more out of the renegotiation. ‘They don’t believe we’d leave the EU over this,’ one EU adviser wrote to me. And they really didn’t. No matter how much I said it.
There were, however, leaders who completely got it. As ever, the northern Europeans, closest to the UK politically, were the most understanding. Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Mark Rutte, the sensible prime ministers of Denmark and the Netherlands, wanted the renegotiation to keep the UK inside the EU and spur much-needed reforms. They understood – and shared – some of our concerns.
The one leader who took a different view from his geographical and political peers was Viktor Orbán. On my visit to Hungary he ushered me out onto the balcony of his grand office in Budapest to speak privately. As we looked across the Danube at the grand buildings of the once-imperial city, he joked, ‘I like coming out here; it makes me think I could be running a really big European country.’ His view was that the EU desperately needed reform, and he hoped we got everything we were asking for. Indeed, he wished we had asked for even more. But he was a lone voice – and frankly support from Orbán would often turn other countries from passive observers to hostile opponents.
As I retell the story of my European tour, it does read as though I was facing permanent, implacable opposition. Blocs even seemed to be forming, objecting to each basket. And yet I was making progress. As I sat down with individual leaders, talked them through my plans, explained how reasonable they were, emphasising how important the proposals – and this renegotiation – were to the future of the EU, I could feel that they were softening.
In addition, the smaller countries’ objections counted for less than those of larger nations. It was Merkel and Hollande that this rested on, not Grybauskaitė and Bettel. And with them particularly I was making headway. Slowly but surely, a deal was coming together. Crucially, we were working with the Commission on how to make my benefit restrictions work within a framework of EU law. There would be an emergency mechanism for countries that faced large migratory pressures to restrict in- and out-of-work benefits for new EU arrivals. I would need to argue that this mechanism would be immediately available to the UK, and would last for a long period of time.
As 2015 drew to a close, I reflected on where we were. Since I was spending so much time in the air, an aviation metaphor felt apt. The plane had taken off in June, with the start of the negotiation. It had reached altitude during the visits. Now I could see the landing lights, the runway …
But I couldn’t touch down yet. The conditions weren’t right. In particular, there was no support for the four years of benefits restrictions. I told the Council that December we would come back in February and try for a deal then.
The start of the final push began with a dinner for Donald Tusk and his team in Downing Street in January 2016.
People assume the EU held all the cards: we needed a lot, they needed nothing. But they did need something. They wanted a success after the botched response to the migration crisis, while I had until the end of 2017 to get my deal. I explained to Tusk: ‘If you give me what I’ve asked for – and they’re not crazy things – I will take this deal and sell it like mad in the referendum. But if you try and half-change me, there’s no need for me to sign up. I’ve got plenty of time.’
I made sure he understood the implications were even greater than us just going into the referendum campaign with no deal. My own willingness to support our continued membership was in the balance. ‘If the February Council denies me these things, and the whole thing breaks up, we are going to have to have a look at our relationship with this organisation,’ I told him. ‘You’ve got to understand that this idea that we must go cap in hand to get a mechanism agreed is ridiculous. We’re the third-biggest contributor. We are a proud country, and if we are treated like supplicants, then we’ll bugger off.’ As a Pole, proud of his nationality, I think he got it.
The draft deal that was circulated at the start of February was nearly there. I called Tusk to say I hoped we could minimise any changes from the existing text, partly because every change would be written up at home as a weakening of the agreement or as a defeat.
My mission was no longer to forge a deal, it was now to stop my draft deal being chipped down by fellow EU leaders. But by the time I arrived at Justus Lipsius on the Thursday afternoon for twenty-one hours of non-stop negotiations, two key proposals were already in jeopardy. The protections on financial regulations remained strongly opposed by France and Luxembourg. The four years for benefit restrictions was left blank. And the time period the welfare brake should last (agreed in principle as seven years) was being disputed by the Visegrad countries, as was the end to child benefit being sent outside the UK.
That afternoon I urged the leaders to support the document to the last detail. If they did so I could take it to the British people, win my referendum, and come back to the European Council with a mandate to be a full and active participant.
We then began a working dinner – all about the migration crisis. It descended into a meeting about a meeting, with a whole hour spent discussing which day of the week we should reconvene. This went on until 2.30 a.m. …
Tusk was just getting started on the nitty-gritty of the British deal. Dozens of meetings took place between sherpas, lawyers, ambassadors and aides. Tusk and Juncker saw each country or grouping in turn, saying, ‘Don’t be ridiculous; you are objecting to that, but you can accept this.’ They would try to grind them down. They would also try to grind us down. In the moments I had spare I would grab five-minute naps on the floor of the British delegation room. My final meeting with Tusk was at 5 a.m. The EU is certainly no observer of its own Working Time Directive.
The following day, a ‘British breakfast’ was scheduled for us to finalise the text of the deal. But we spent so much time haggling with the French, Poles and Czechs that the breakfast became a lunch, then a tea. I wondered if we’d ever eat.
I tried to break the deadlock through Tusk that evening. ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘you’ve played this very well, but now we’ve got to put on the table something that is good enough for me to hold a referendum with. If it’s less than I want, I’ll say forget this, let’s do it later on in the year.’
I was quite prepared to do that. Many people had advised me to go further. Lynton and Ameet wanted me to reject the deal and go for it again later in the year. But I favoured the argument made by those who pointed out that if I walked out, I would have to walk back in at some point – and then what? Goodwill, patience and a reasoned
, rational approach had got me this far. I thought they could get me over the line.
And I was willing to compromise. I had to be. They had made compromises, and I had to be prepared to do so too. The welfare brake, ever-closer union and protections for the pound remained my red lines. I had everything I wanted on ever-closer union: Britain was carved out of it. And the protections for the pound were secure. It was on welfare that movement was needed. I had won the battle that the welfare brake should be immediately available to the UK, and that it would last for a long period of time (seven years). But still the Visegrad countries did not agree.
Tusk proposed two alterations. The first was indexing child benefit to the migrants’ countries’ living standards, so they could still send the money home, but it would be far less than now, and therefore far less of a draw. The second was that while the welfare brake would immediately apply in the UK, instead of migrants getting no welfare for four years, it would be phased in over four years. After long and excruciating conversations with the team, it was clear that there was no option: I would have to concede on both points. It would remain a good deal, and giving way would enable me to get it over the line.
Finally, at 8.30 p.m., it started: a ‘British dinner’. I told the room how much I appreciated what they were doing. I praised all the good things we’d done together, like raising money for Syrian refugees, opening up markets and imposing sanctions against Iran and Russia. ‘I know I often don’t talk positively about this place, but I do feel positive, and we will come back more positively if we can sort this out,’ I said.
Still, the Luxembourger and the Portuguese wanted to raise objections. The Greek wanted to force through his own changes on the back of ours. The Swede wanted to email the paper to his parliament for approval.
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