LONDON LETTER:David Cameron does not want a fight with the EU and the EU is happy to oblige, but the truce may not last long, writes MARK HENNESSYLondon Editor
EUROPEAN UNION leaders may have dined yesterday on langoustine, chicken and a little 1990 claret for lunch during their Brussels summit, but European Commission president José Manuel Barroso went to lengths to put David Cameron at his ease when the two met early in the Berlaymont, offering a traditional British fry of bacon and eggs rather than anything continental.
“I was totally surprised that the great British breakfast has made its way into the European Commission. I suppose that was José Manuel trying to make me feel at home and it was a very nice start,” said Mr Cameron, who spent much of the day developing personal relationships with fellow EU leaders, whose predecessors often did not have the warmest of relations with Conservative leaders.
Mindful of the worsening ties between German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy – whom he will host in London today to mark the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle’s call to the French – Cameron offered just a little flattery to Merkel, portraying himself as the neophyte when he made sure to seek her advice about how best to conduct himself at EU meetings.
However, politics is about interests not friendships, and Cameron was quick to claim victories, saying that the United Kingdom would not be included in any efforts by euro-zone countries to enforce better budget discipline on errant members, including penalties, while he insisted that he had seen off attempts by those who want EU governments to be forced to present their budgets to Brussels before putting them before national parliaments.
“I am clear that that means that Britain will always present its budget to parliament first,” he told journalists later, insisting that the United Kingdom was not a member of the euro and would not become a member of the euro.
“It is in our national interest that there is a strong and secure euro zone. We support efforts to make it more stable and deal with its difficulties but we also want to ensure that our red lines are kept.” Mr Cameron had a brief conversation with Brian Cowen on the margins of the summit, though the British were not sure for a long time that it was even going to happen, but the first serious engagement between the two will not happen until they meet in Downing Street next Wednesday. However, Mr Cowen was keen to applaud him for his handling of the Bloody Sunday report on Tuesday.
“I thanked him for the substance, the content and the manner in which he delivered his statement to the House of Commons as a result of the publication of the Saville Inquiry.
“I met with representatives of the families, as you know, yesterday afternoon in Government Buildings and they conveyed to me their appreciation of Mr Cameron’s contribution in the Commons the previous day and I conveyed that to him.
Mr Cameron’s efforts to build ties with fellow EU leaders and not walls has already caused some grumbles from Eurosceptics in his own party and in the right-wing British press, with some raising questions about his decision to seek advice from “Frau Merkel”, while another pointed out that Mr Cameron had become the first Conservative premier “ever to walk across the threshold of the Berlaymont” – a building regarded by many of them as the font of all ills.
For now though, the British press is more interested in spending cuts at home than Brussels arcana, particularly following chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander’s decision to postpone £6 billion worth of spending and scrap £2 billion more, including schools, hospitals, search-and-rescue helicopters and industry grants to companies that were signed off by Labour in its last months in office.
“It was right to review decisions taken so close to the election. There was a suspicion that some of those were not good decisions. We are going to have to take very difficult decisions. It is right to review decisions taken by the last government when it wasn’t thinking about value for money but was perhaps thinking about something else,” the prime minister declared.