A 2016 EU referendum is not realistic

Jonathan Lindsell, 6 January 2015

On Sunday began five months of committed general election campaigning. The prime minister floated a counterfactual to Andrew Marr, predicated on a Conservative majority:

‘The referendum must take place before the end of 2017. If we could do that earlier, I’d be delighted. The sooner I can deliver on that, the better.’

This prompted speculation in the media that Britain might have an EU vote as soon as 2016. There simply is not time for Cameron to achieve even modest negotiations, then campaign on them.

Firstly, Cameron’s party will have no time for renegotiation until late May – and the Foreign Office cannot prepare the groundwork before then, because the Liberal Democrats presumably oppose the Tories’ reform goals. The EU is constantly in limbo, so minor tinkering will happen, but they won’t be Cameron’s reforms. They will be Timmermans’ reforms, Juncker’s reforms.

Spain’s next general election must be before 20 December 2015, meaning one of the larger EU states will be paralysed with campaigning, and its government unable to take clear positions, just when Cameron would need to get talks started. Denmark too has a general election in September 2015, potentially losing Cameron a possible ally in Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Poland decides its Senate and Sejm (lower house) in October. Meanwhile Sweden remains precarious under Stefan Lofven’s shaken coalition.

Lofven is likely to resist serious EU renegotiation, both as a pro-European and to avoid conceding ground to the populist anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party. Similar concerns would be on François Hollande’s mind regarding Front National. Indeed, given the rise of anti-establishment parties throughout Europe, Cameron will struggle to win tangible reform commitments even from Germany, a natural ally.

This is because, since October, the ‘Pegida’ movement has grown from a few hundred demonstrators chanting in Dresden to tens of thousands marching all across the country, exhorting onlookers to ‘wake up’ and support ‘Germany for the Germans’. This prompted alarm from Germany’s centre and left, with Chancellor Angela Merkel directly criticising the anti-immigrant and anti-asylum protesters in her New Year address.

The fastest way to amend the EU treaties, which even the few goals Cameron has explicitly laid out would require, is an ‘Article 48 TEU simplified revision’ procedure. This would avoid the mammoth task of an Intergovernmental Conference, but would be easiest to run in 2017 when Britain has the Council Presidency. Even getting past the diplomatic hurdles above, this amendment protocol requires unanimity, so any EU member state could block changes or demand concessions of their own.

All of this done, Article 48 then requires approval ‘by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.’ For several countries, this would mean referendums or national parliamentary votes. Britain’s own referendum would be delayed until it was clear what exactly had been decided. Of course, it would be nice for the British people to then have time to examine these changes and debate the best course of action before voting. That cannot reasonably take place before 2017.