Ken Clarke: Cameron's EU reform plans could be quite a nightmare

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/17/ken-clarke-cameron-eu-reform-plans-nightmare

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Kenneth Clarke, the veteran pro-European cabinet minister, has warned that David Cameron's EU reform plans would be "quite a nightmare" if the prime minister tried to embark on a revision of the Lisbon treaty.

In a rare public intervention on the EU, in which he said there was "nothing wrong with the euro at all", the former chancellor said Cameron would be better off seeking to negotiate a more modest political agreement with other member states.

The remarks show the small – but relatively senior – pro-European Tory grouping believes the prime minister will struggle to negotiate a revision of the Lisbon treaty in time for an in/out referendum on Britain's EU membership by the end of 2017.

Cameron, who outlined his blueprint for reform in a Sunday Telegraph article over the weekend, has said that he hopes to use an expected revision of the Lisbon treaty aimed at underpinning new eurozone governance arrangements as an opportunity to table his reform plans.

In his Bloomberg speech on the EU last year Cameron said he was prepared to broker agreement in other ways if EU member states rejected his plans in a treaty negotiation which had to be agreed by all 28 EU member states.

Clarke said the PM would be better off following the more modest route of a "political agreement" outside the EU treaties. Speaking at the launch of a pamphlet by the pro-EU Tory European Mainstream group, he said: "If you need an IGC [inter-governmental conference of all EU member states to agree major treaty change] you need an IGC. If you need a treaty change you need a treaty change.

"But the idea that you start off by saying well you've got to find something that requires an IGC and a treaty change is not where we are and would be a somewhat foolish way of going about it, particularly as IGCs are usually quite a nightmare to handle and get a treaty out."

Clarke, who attends cabinet as minister without portfolio, questioned whether treaty change could be introduced by 2017 – the prime minister's deadline for a referendum. Asked whether he was saying the prime minister could achieve his ambitions outside a revised treaty, Clarke said: "If you can it is obviously preferable to do so because you deliver it quicker. You have got a 2017 date apart from anything else and you have got to get 28 member states to agree to whatever reform process you are engaged in.

"What I am saying is concentrate on the substance of reforms, which I believe very strongly should essentially be those designed to make Europe and all its member states more competitive and more able to earn their living in the modern world … Lots of things can be done by political agreement. Political undertakings – so long as the Germans and the British and the French say are going to keep to them they work perfectly well."

Clarke also dismissed some of his Eurosceptic Tory colleagues as eccentric. He said: "The backbench Eurosceptic opinion is altogether more newsworthy particularly in the rightwing popular press … The party depends for its support on the Conservative mainstream and the more orthodox backbenchers.

"The price of orthodoxy is being less newsworthy than some of my more strident and even – dare I say – occasionally eccentric colleagues who I have seen over the years become household names for a year or two whilst they last. Then others take over and succeed them."

Downing Street said Clarke's remarks on treaty reform were in line with Cameron's thinking. A spokesman said: "Ken Clarke supports the prime minister's policy as outlined in his Bloomberg speech."

Clarke also insisted that there had been nothing wrong with the original architecture of the euro, which he helped draw up as chancellor. "There was nothing wrong with the euro at all. What the finance ministers who put it together never contemplated was the member states that went ahead would just break and ignore every rule we'd spent three or four years negotiating before they started.

"Had the eurozone functioned as the finance ministers of the mid 1990s contemplated we would not have the sovereign debt. We would have some of the present commercial crisis, the banking crisis and so on. But we would not have half the problems we have now. But you can't redo that.

"The eurozone will only be mended when it has actually got a proper structure that looks enforceable and looks likely to stand the test of time. I am very much not guilty. It was letting the Italians in and letting the Germans break the fiscal rules [that] was only the start of what went wrong."