British Prime Minister David Cameron has accepted that negotiations on four key areas of reform that he is demanding will not be completed during the two-day summit due to strong resistance to some of his demands in a number of member states.
Britain will hold an in-out referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017.
It has been a long and crisis-ridden year for the European Union, staring with the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and concluding with another massacre in the French capital on 13 November.
In between, both the Greek debt crisis and the influx of one and a half million refugees, have posed an unprecedented challenge to the solidarity which is supposed to underpin the European Union.
Today leaders will discuss the latest initiative to deal with the refugee crisis; the creation of a dedicated European Border and Coast Guard which could intervene in the management of a member state's borders if it is deemed that that country cannot cope with a migration influx.
Already there are concerns in some capitals that the initiative is too much of an infringement on national sovereignty.
On a British exit from the EU, or Brexit, this will also be the first time that all 28 leaders will have a chance to air their views on Mr Cameron's demands.
In particular his insistence that Britain can prevent non-British EU citizens working there from enjoying tax credits for four years has gone down badly in most capitals and is regarded as being against EU law.
The final negotiation will happen in February, but Mr Cameron desperately needs something that he can sell to Eurosceptics in his party, and the British electorate.
rte.ie
17/12/15
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Crise migratoire, menace de "Brexit"... l’UE veut calmer le jeu...
ReplyDeletePour le dernier sommet européen de l’année 2015, les Vingt-Huit se penchent sur de nombreux sujets sensibles, de la crise migratoire en passant par le "Brexit" ou encore de la lutte contre le terrorisme.
Les dirigeants européens vont s'efforcer, jeudi 17 décembre, à Bruxelles, de serrer les rangs face aux défis qui menacent comme jamais l'unité de l'Europe : la crise migratoire d'une ampleur sans précédent, le contre-terrorisme, et le risque d'un "Brexit" (la sortie du Royaume-Uni de l'UE).
"Il n'y a plus de temps à perdre. Il faut agir" pour endiguer les flux de migrants, a lancé le président de la Commission européenne Jean-Claude Juncker à la veille du dernier sommet européen de 2015, en exhortant les États membres à se ranger derrière sa proposition d'un corps européen de garde-frontières. Un projet "audacieux", selon l'exécutif européen, qui prévoit même la possibilité d'intervenir dans un État récalcitrant, au grand dam de ceux qui craignent une atteinte à leur souveraineté......france24.com