PM In Difficult EU Budget Talks
Updated: 4:14pm UK, Tuesday 20 November 2012
By Glen Oglaza, Political Correspondent
David Cameron faces an almost impossible task in Brussels this week - how to persuade 27 nations to agree a budget for the next seven years.
Especially when 17 of them are net recipients of EU funding and the European Commission is demanding a 5% budget increase.
Mr Cameron will tell the Commission that's impossible in this time of austerity, but he has few allies.
The Prime Minister will argue for a budget cut, and failing that a real-terms freeze, and believes he has the backing of the "people of Europe" who, he told the CBI, are having their "pockets picked".
But the likelihood is that the 27 will fail to agree at a summit that could go into the small hours of Saturday morning and possibly beyond.
If Mr Cameron uses the British veto, they can set annual budgets with a majority of countries agreeing, a process known as a Qualified Majority Voting.
Having lost a Commons vote and with a mandate from MPs demanding a budget cut, Mr Cameron may have no choice - he certainly has very little room for manoeuvre.
Ed Miliband, having been unable to resist the temptation to inflict a defeat on the Government, is now saying he won't let Britain "sleepwalk towards an exit from the EU".
But there is a growing feeling in Brussels, and perhaps in Paris and Berlin as well, that the UK is becoming increasingly semi-detached and may indeed be on its way out of the door.
Mr Cameron will be at pains to convince the other leaders that this is not the case and frequently makes the argument, deployed by the CBI at their conference this week, that more than half of the UK's trade is with European Union partners.
Eurosceptics like to remind us that the UK pays £10bn to the EU, while ignoring the far larger figure achieved in profits from trade or the increased international influence Britain enjoys by being part of the EU.
But Mr Cameron has to keep his own MPs happy (Ukip is waiting in the wings and mopping up disaffected Tory votes), but he is also under pressure from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners who, of course, take a very different position on Europe.
It doesn't help that senior members of his own party are wading in with helpful suggestions.
David Davies, once his rival for the leadership, is demanding not one but two referenda, the second a straight IN-OUT of the EU.
Boris Johnson, with a typically flamboyant flourish, suggested he behave more like Margaret Thatcher: "It is time for David Cameron to put on that pineapple-coloured wig and powder-blue suit, whirl his handbag round his head and bring it crashing to the table with the words, 'No, non, nein.'"
As Ken Clarke has pointed out, we seem to have a regular collective nervous breakdown when it comes to the subject of Europe but, with the expansion in the size of the Union to 27 and an unelected Commission that must be completely out-of-touch to ask for a budget increase when the citizens of Europe are suffering the effects of a global financial crisis, the real question is this: Has the EU become so large that it is now too unwieldy and setting a budget for 27 countries is simply not possible?
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