The Prime Minister had travelled to Warsaw for talks with his Polish counterpart Beata Szydlo in the latest leg of his desperate bid to reform Britain’s relationship with Brussels.
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The migrant crisis could make voters more likely to back Britain leaving the European Union, Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted.
Cameron, the first foreign leader to visit Warsaw since Szydlo’s Law & Justice government came to power in October, acknowledged the disagreement over aspects of his demands, but stressed that a solution could be found. Law & Justice is a sister party to Cameron’s Conservatives in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
“However there are also discussions and issues about which we do not see eye-to-eye today”, she added, referring to the welfare proposals.
In a letter to EU leaders on Monday (7 December), EU Council president Donald Tusk said the issue “is the most delicate and will require a substantive political debate”.
In an interview with The Spectator, reported in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Cameron said: “I think with both the eurozone crisis and the migration crisis, the short term impact is for people to think, “oh Christ, push Europe away from me, it’s bringing me problems”.
Asked whether he expected Mr Cameron to make concessions to reach agreement on a reform package at a Brussels summit in February, Mr Duncan Smith said: “My general sense is that the case is still there and the Prime Minister is still going to make it. I remain upbeat”.
“The short-term reaction can be ‘Get me out of here.’ The longer-term reaction is ‘We must find a better way of working with our partners because we share the same challenges, ‘” he added.
“There are issues on which there is not a full agreement between us…”
His plan would bar European Union citizens from other countries from claiming in-work benefits until they had been in the United Kingdom for four years, in the belief that would deter some workers considering a move to Britain.
“But it was never envisaged that free movement would trigger quite such vast numbers of people moving across our continent”.
He said he supported the principle of free movement to work, saying it was “a basic treaty right and a key part of the single market” and that Romanians and other Europeans “make a valuable contribution” to the UK.
Urging Mr Cameron to stop getting bogged down in the details of negotiations over benefit changes, Mr McFadden wrote: “Ultimately, our membership is not just about access to tax credits and the Prime Minister has got himself in a tangle of his own choosing”.
Cameron is now touring Europe in an attempt to secure reforms to the 28-member bloc, before campaigning to stay in the EU.
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“This renegotiation, this question has become bigger and more important with the security crisis that we face in Europe”, Cameron said.
