Eurotroll Cameron

UK prime minister David Cameron ”has promised to do "everything possible" to stop other EU states discussing the single market without the UK” (BBC News UK Politics).

According to the Open Europe blog the EU institutions are ”all over the draft proposal” for an international treaty for a reinforced economic union. The signatories of the treaty will work towards "deeper integration in the internal market".

The EUobserver tells us that ”British PM David Cameron on Friday (6 January) vowed to do "everything possible" to prevent EU institutions from being used in a new fiscal treaty the UK has refused to join, but admitted there were legal difficulties in pursuing that path”.

It looks as if Cameron's strategy and tactics aim at driving as many of the non-eurozone member states as possible towards the euro core. With or without the EU institutions – where Britain has both the voice and the vote – the governments, or most of them, are bound to begin laying the groundwork concerning all aspects of economic policy, including competition, the internal market, tax issues etc. intergovernmentally.

Previous UK governments laid the foundations for Britain's obstructionist position in the European Union, but Cameron's policy of Eurotrolling is achieving a qualitative shift towards irrelevance in all matters except his country's potential for sabotage in Europe on (many fundamental) issues requiring unanimity.

The draft international treaty will do little to remedy the fundamental flaws of the European Union or the euro currency, but the government of the United Kingdom seems dead set on retaining as few allies among the EU members as possible, when they are forced to choose between the European Union and Britain.

I am waiting for how the English tabloids are going to construct Cameron's isolation as splendid.

Update 8 January 2012: Via @EuroCelt David Garrahy I noticed an op-ed piece on Irishtimes.com, where Paul Gillespie discusses how Ireland should handle Britain's self-marginalisation in Europe. - The UK seems to have set in motion a process of alignment by EU members with the eurozone core.



Ralf Grahn