Brussels, 22/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - The UK's new foreign secretary, Philip Hammond (who took over from William Hague last week), stated in an interview on the BBC on Sunday 20 July that he would vote for the UK to leave the EU - unless relations between the two parties were fundamentally reformed.
Hammond, who has taken on the post of foreign secretary as part of a large UK government reshuffle which saw a shift towards so-called euroscepticism, believed that the EU needed a deep change in the way it is run. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has promised - if he is re-elected in 2015 - to organise a referendum in 2017 on reforming relations between the UK and EU. Cameron is trying to secure some reforms by that point - especially on the free movement of European migrants (- reforms which other European countries do not want, however). The UK is also due to abandon certain policies linked to home affairs and justice by the end of 2014 - even if the British government wants then to be able to pick up certain police and judicial arrangements à la carte. Cameron held a meeting on all these issues last week with the incoming European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, to whom Cameron gave a list of his desiderata. (SP)