Brussels, 10/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - After the UK parliament passed the Bill setting up the referendum on EU membership, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond laid out, in a piece published by Politico on Wednesday 10 June, the four areas on which renegotiation of the UK's relationship with the EU will focus.
These four areas are the internal market and the emphasis laid on growth and jobs, euro zone integration, the subsidiarity principle and social benefits.
Hammond said the EU had to further open its doors to world trade and complete trade agreements with the United States, Japan and other countries in Asia and South America. The minister, while supporting tighter integration in the euro zone, said that it was essential that the economies that were not part of the euro area were protected and he argued for a two-speed Europe. On subsidiarity, Hammond said that national parliaments had to be given greater say, with groups of parliaments being able to block proposed regulation. He no longer made any mention of the idea of red cards, which, it would seem, would be too difficult to put into effect.
Finally, with regard to social benefits, he said that, “while we accept that the free movement of people to work is one of the four fundamental freedoms of the EU and these negotiations do not seek to curtail this freedom, we do want to protect the UK's welfare system from abuse and reduce the incentives that encourage highly skilled workers to travel to the UK to do low-skilled jobs. He added: “We must also develop the other freedoms, in particular freedom of movement of services and of capital, to ensure that it is not just free movement of people that contributes to convergence of living standards across Europe”. (Solenn Paulic)