My Austrian MEP friend was incredulous. ‘Is that it?’ he asked, stunned by the modest nature of the concessions David Cameron is seeking from his fellow heads of government.

Like other Euro-integrationists, the MEP had been expecting tough demands from our Government. Now he is stunned and relieved by how little is being demanded.

After the unexpected Conservative victory this month, EU leaders were braced for a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Brussels. If there’s one thing politicians understand, it’s an election victory.

Some MEPs are stunned by the modest nature of the concessions David Cameron is seeking from his fellow heads of government in Europe

The Prime Minister’s French and German counterparts, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel — he will meet both this week — know that British voters have just given him a mandate to overhaul Britain’s relationship with the EU.

What with the crisis in Ukraine and the now very real prospect of a Greek default, the last thing the Brussels elite want is for Britain to walk away.

The United Kingdom is the second largest economy in the EU and the second largest contributor to its budget. In other words, we have clout. So Eurocrats were gearing up to offer the UK a special deal.

They were not prepared to drop the idea of a politically amalgamated Europe. As Angela Merkel put it recently: ‘We need a political union, which means we must gradually cede powers to Europe and give Europe control.’

But, as Britain is plainly not willing to be a province of a European state, they would find some unique status for us.

Today Mr Cameron is due to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the man he tried to block as President of the European Commission, having invited him to Chequers. This could have been a chance for Mr Cameron to make robust demands for a fundamental reshaping of our relationship with the EU.

True, Mr Juncker is a Fifties-style federalist who wants an EU minimum wage as well as a European army and police force. In his first speech after his appointment, he announced that he also wanted more tax harmonisation across nations.

Yet Mr Juncker is no fool. He knows that Britain will never willingly follow such an agenda. So he made a point of indicating, both before and after his appointment, that he envisaged a different category of membership for the UK, whereby we could take part in the internal trading market while opting out of political integration.

Today Mr Cameron is due to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the man he tried to block as President of the European Commission. The pair were famously pictured high-fiving last year

Such a deal keeps being dangled before us by Euro-federalists as well as by the more Anglophile European leaders who feel most strongly about keeping us in.

Jacques Delors, the former President of the European Commission, even emerged from retirement to propose what he called a ‘privileged partnership’ for Britain, which he envisaged as free trade in goods, services and capital, but withdrawal from the non-commercial aspects of the EU such as defence, criminal justice, energy policy, fisheries, immigration and employment law.

The leader of the Euro-liberals, a former Belgian prime minister called Guy Verhofstadt, made the same offer just three weeks ago, calling it ‘associate membership’.

Whatever name we give it, such a deal is what most Britons want and, indeed, what they believed they were voting for in the 1975 referendum on our membership of the Common Market — a trading rather than a political union.

Yet, extraordinarily, David Cameron has so far not asked for it. Instead, he wants to keep the existing deal, making only some minimal changes in time for a referendum next year in which he will lead the campaign to keep us in.

I struggle to think of any political story where the media coverage is so far removed from the reality. It’s not that the EU won’t repatriate significant powers to Britain. It’s that Britain won’t ask.

So what is Britain asking for? Mainly things that can be implemented by domestic legislation and require no EU agreement anyway.

Many Brits want a trading rather than a political union with the EU but David Cameron has so far not asked for it

The Government’s main focus is on removing benefits from EU nationals in Britain. This is a perfectly reasonable aim: European leaders recognise that Britain’s non-contributory welfare system is unusual and that, in most EU states, newcomers must pay a certain amount into the system before they can draw from it.

Still, as long as the principle of free movement is maintained — and the PM is not challenging it — such a reform won’t require a new inter-governmental conference or a new treaty. Britain just needs to change its domestic arrangements.

Much the same is true of the Government’s other declared aims. It wants, for example, a formal recognition that Britain won’t join the euro. Well, duh. While we’re about it, let’s have a formal recognition that Thursday comes after Wednesday.

It says Eurozone states mustn’t set economic policy for the whole EU in a way that disadvantages non-participants, but there is no certain way to prevent this, however the law is written. Nor will scrapping the words ‘ever-closer union’ make any difference as long as integrationist Euro-judges remain in charge.

I almost want to weep at the missed opportunity.

We could settle the EU in a manner that would satisfy 80 per cent of British voters. We could strike a bargain that would leave us fully involved in the single market, while allowing us to take control of most other policies.

We could secure more freedom to reach bilateral trade deals with non-EU states such as Australia and India. We could reassert the primacy of our own law, so that EU directives and regulations would be treated as advisory pending the implementing of legislation by Parliament.

Yet it now looks as if none of these things is even being discussed by Mr Cameron, despite his tough-sounding rhetoric that he wants these issues sorted out ‘by Christmas’.

Like Harold Wilson in 1975, the PM evidently hopes to get away with changes that are more optical than substantial. Other EU leaders will, no doubt, play their allotted parts. We will be treated to a sham row, a haka of feigned aggression, during which credulous journalists will write of ‘tense talks’.

At the end of it, other EU leaders will be trotted out to complain that the British got their way. But we’ll still be EU members on the existing terms, subject to Brussels jurisdiction in farming, fishing, social policy, migration, employment law, energy policy, the European Arrest Warrant and all the rest.

Will we fall for the same trick twice? Will we, as our parents did 40 years ago, vote on the basis of a deal that falls apart soon after our ballots have been counted?

I hope not. For, if the pro-EU side in the coming referendum were to win on the basis of a sleight-of-hand, a series of false assurances, the bitterness and betrayal that has poisoned our relationship with the EU will remain.

I have a higher opinion of my fellow countrymen. We won’t give our politicians the benefit of the doubt again — not on this, of all issues.

If the Government doesn’t secure a looser deal through renegotiation, there is another way to secure it. We can get it by voting to leave, then striking the same bargain as the Swiss or the Channel Islanders, who remain successful despite being outside the EU — common market, not common government.

The pessimism of 1975 has gone. We are no longer the sick man of Europe, enfeebled by strikes and inflation. We are the fastest-growing major economy in the world. We have created more jobs over the past four years than in the other 27 EU states put together.