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David Cameron fails to persuade Polish PM over EU welfare proposals | David Cameron fails to persuade Polish PM over EU welfare proposals |
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David Cameron has been warned that he faces two months of tough negotiations on his EU proposals after the Polish prime minister said Warsaw did not “see eye to eye” with the UK over plans to restrict access to in-work benefits. | |
In a sign of the deep unease in eastern Europe at the proposed restrictions, Beata Szydlo warned Cameron that the “basic principles” of the EU’s rules on freedom of movement must be respected. | |
The prime minister has spent the last two days visiting Bucharest and Romania before an EU summit in Brussels next week where he had hoped to reach a deal ahead of a referendum on Britain’s EU membership. | |
But Cameron has agreed to delay the final round of negotiations until the next EU summit in February after Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said that EU leaders have failed to agree to the plan to ban EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits for four years. | |
Poland and other eastern European countries, whose citizens would be hit harder than citizens from wealthier member states, believe the ban breaks the EU’s laws on discrimination. | |
The Polish prime minister warned Cameron not to infringe the EU’s rules on free movement which guarantee the right of EU citizens to travel and seek work across the EU as she said she had raised concerns about the UK’s proposals on “the welfare system and child benefits”. | |
In addition to the proposed ban on in-work benefits, the UK is attempting to ban EU migrants working in the UK from sending back child benefit to children back home. | |
The ban on in-work benefits would require treaty change because EU citizens are entitled to be treated in the same way in the workplace, including topups to their wages through tax credits, as UK citizens. Szydlo said: “There are also discussions and issues about which we do not see eye to eye today.” | |
But Cameron took heart when Szydlo signalled Poland’s determination to keep its historic wartime ally in the UK. Szydlo spoke of a “common direction” and said was hopeful that a solution could be found to keep the UK in the EU. “I believe that these issues will be further discussed by us. We will be talking about them, we will try to solve them together in consensus.” | |
The prime minister moved to reassure his Polish counterpart that he was not seeking to discriminate against Poles in Britain and stressed that he was not seeking to undermine the EU’s founding commitment to free movement. | |
He said: “Even on the most difficult issue of welfare, we have agreed to work together to find a solution. I support the principle of free movement and I greatly value the contribution that many Poles and other Europeans make to Britain.” | |
But the prime minister added that the UK needed to impose some restrictions on benefits to reduce migration. EU migrants will effectively be banned from claiming out of work benefits under welfare reforms. | |
Cameron said: “The challenge is the scale of the vast movement of people we have seen across Europe over the last decade and the pressure that can put on public services. That is the problem we need to address and I believe with the type of political will I have seen here in Poland we can find a way.” | |
The prime minister had earlier warned that the “migration crisis” might prompt people to support an exit from the EU. He told the Spectator: “I think with both the eurozone crisis and the migration crisis, the short-term impact is for people to think: ‘Oh Christ, push Europe away from me, it’s bringing me problems.’” | |
But the prime minister added that he hoped that on reflection people might decide to remain in the EU because it is “on our doorstep”. | |
He added: “I think the longer-term reaction might actually be, well if they are going to have a single currency and they are on our doorstep and they are going to try and make it work, let’s make sure our relationship with them works and then we have safeguards, not least for our vital financial services industry so that the system doesn’t work against us.” |