Cameron’s EU deal: the reaction at home and abroad

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/20/cameron-eu-deal-reaction-politicians-journalists

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Theresa May, home secretary

The EU is far from perfect, and no one should be in any doubt that this deal must be part of an ongoing process of change and reform – crucial if it is to succeed in a changing world.

Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung

The prime minister wants reforms, but they are not really to be taken seriously: Cameron’s need for change is for the purpose of political self-preservation. Cameron is about Cameron, not the EU.

Bill Cash, Eurosceptic Conservative MP

There is absolutely uncertainty and a complete contradiction between what [ministers] are claiming this means and the change that will actually happen. It could amount to cheating voters at the polling booth.

Laura Sandys, chair of (pro-EU) European Movement UK

The PM has shaped a deal that shows the UK has extraordinary influence with our European partners, offers the public a vote on a strong UK-oriented reform package and will deliver a more competitive Europe for the benefit of us all.

Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director general

UK businesses want to see changes to the EU that will put Europe on the path to a more competitive and prosperous future. The prime minister’s reform package looks to be a major step forward on that journey.

Frank Field, Labour MP

What a choice our poor old country faces. There’s widespread support among voters across Europe (but not leading politicians) for a fundamental EU reform programme, but our government never seriously considered leading on this front.

Caroline Lucas, Green MP

Cameron has, in the main, secured his reforms, and thrown some shreds of red meat to his backbenches, but these steps backwards don’t overshadow the benefit that being in Europe brings to Britain.

Marley Morris of thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research

Our research suggests that the public care about the issue of benefits in principle, because they see the current rules as unfair on Britain, and so the changes are an important part of the final deal.

The Telegraph online

It is astonishing that such humble proposals caused that much difficulty. What is so shocking about the proposition that British taxpayers should not have to pay such generous child welfare payments to children living overseas?

Daily Mail editorial

Cameron and George Osborne have amused us enough with their risible charade. Let a fully informed people now decide.

Xavier Vidal-Folch, El País columnist

The [deal] is a legal mess. It amends the [EU] treaties … while cynically claiming it is only interpreting them.

Le Figaro, front-page editorial

If Britain remains in the EU on the conditions it has been offered, it kills it. If it leaves, it kills it too … As it is not combined with a project of collective relaunch, the Brussels compromise puts the worm into the fruit.

Eliseo Oliveras, El Periódico

The concession to British blackmail consolidates the EU’s double standards: a generous accommodation of the demands of the powerful countries (Great Britain, Germany, France) and the implacable imposition of diktats on the weak (Greece and Spain).

German weekly Spiegel

It was the Cameron show we expected. With numerous crises facing the EU at the moment, it was in no one’s interest that the Brits leave the union and weaken it further.

Adriana Cerretelli, Brussels correspondent for Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore

In the end, the agreement arrived – without winners or losers. A deal between opposed weaknesses, shared by both those who want more Europe and those who want less. Perhaps it wasn’t worth wasting so much time changing something that would change almost nothing.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Sober realpolitician Merkel knows of course that neither the stated goal of the treaty nor its newly agreed interpretation have any legal significance.

Nikolaus Blome, commentator in Bild

Luckily, both the EU commission and other leaders eventually realised that while the Brits would damage themselves with a Brexit, the EU would practically be destroyed with it. That’s a change from a year ago, when the impression was that the Brits were ‘only’ threatening us with their own suicide.

Greek daily Kathimerini

The rift caused by the influx into the 28-member EU was brutally exposed in the Belgian capital as a decision by Austria to introduce a daily cap on asylum seekers prompted a warning from Greece that it would not sign the final conclusions of the summit, including a text on Britain’s membership.

Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers

The things he set out to achieve at the beginning were not sufficient … We have not seen any return of powers here. Nothing that begins to reverse that ratchet effect that takes us in a direction we do not want go in.

Italian daily La Repubblica

David Cameron can celebrate because he can now take home a ‘yes’ to most of the requests that he made. The agreement came out of a working dinner in Brussels.”