Hvem er bange for Cameron?

According to the polls Britain will soon have a euro sceptic conservative Prime Minister. This is not the first time in European history – and it will hardly be the last.

I covered my first ever European summit in June 1988, in the German city of Hannover. The most important issue on the agenda was the creation of the Delors committee whose job it was to come up with concrete plans for how the European Community could create a common currency.

The then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, did not like the idea of a common currency but still – together with her Danish conservative colleague, Prime Minister Poul Schlüter – she presented the creation of the Delors committee as a success. Denmark and Britain had succeeded in burying plans for a common currency in a committee!

Thatcher was well known for her sharp criticism of the European Community. But if you look back at the period where she was Prime Minister, she participated in creating the Single Act where the rule of unanimity first was abandoned and replaced by qualified majority voting, as well as the White Paper that eventually led to the single market.

She accepted the start of the negotiations on the single currency. When Commission President, Jacques Delors, in December 1989 arrived with plans to supplement the internal market with a social dimension, Margaret Thatcher criticized the plans in very strong words but ended up accepting that the rest for the 11 EC member countries took it on.

[quote align="right" author=""]But just as Thatcher and Major, David Cameron will soon realise that there is another world on the other side of the Channel. The real world.[/quote]

A few years later another euro sceptic Tory Prime Minister arrived on the European scene. John Major took over and landed directly into two intergovernmental conferences, one on an economic and monetary union and the other one on a political union.

John Major had not been Prime Minister for long before he had to make a choice. He was given the possibility to finish the two IGC´s in June 1991 with two more limited treaties and the prospect of holding a British election afterward, or he could hold his election in the autumn but with the treaty negotiations ongoing, knowing that this would mean other European countries raising their ambitions.

John Major preferred not to finish the treaty talks before his election and as a result the German government presented the whole concept of a European cooperation on justice and home affairs in addition to all that was already on the table in June 1991.

Six months later, in December 1991, John Major and the other EC leaders finished the negotiations on the Maastricht treaty that created the European Union with its single currency, its common foreign and security policy as well as its cooperation on justice and home affairs.

Compare this to the period of the last two Labour Prime Ministers.

Tony Blair gave us the Lisbon growth strategy with peer reviews and extremely limited EU powers. He participated in the negotiations on the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice. Two treaties that both insufficiently adjusted the European Unions institutional set up but also two treaties that did not contain any huge new transfers of sovereignty to Brussels.

When Gordon Brown took over in June 2007 his first task was to participate in finishing negotiations on what became the Lisbon treaty. Here again the main features were institutional changes and the creation of new institutions like the European External Action Service and the role as president of the Council.

So if you go back a couple of decades in the EU history the picture is clear.

British Tory Prime Ministers signed the treaties that have given Europe the most significant new powers, namely the single market, the single currency, the common foreign and security policy and the cooperation on justice and home affairs.

Basically the only large EU reform during the two last Labour Prime Ministers would be the new powers of the European Parliament, which are now co-legislators in almost all areas.

So why worry about the euro sceptic David Cameron becoming Britain’s next prime minister?

What we do know about his policies on Europe so far, is that he is strongly against a number of issues that have one thing in common – they are not on the European agenda. They are issues like treaty change, the European Court of Justice, the charter of fundamental rights etc.

It would of course have been more interesting to hear the conservative party’s views on issues actually on the EU agenda (the Commission work programme for 2010 could be recommended reading). Issues like the revision of the directives on market abuse, capital requirements and credit rating agencies, the North Sea off shore grid, the registered traveller program and many others.

But why spend time in the real world when you can create one on your own?

We know very little on what will happen if and when David Cameron becomes the next British Prime Minister.

What we do know need not scare us.

He is strongly against a number of issues that are not on the agenda.

Tories have historically accepted that Europe moves forward and deepens its cooperation in any field – as long as Britain does not have to participate.

And we also know that the British Conservatives will be the party that will have the least influence on the issues actually on the EU agenda.

Almost all legislative proposals in the Commission work programme for 2010 will be adopted with powers equally shared between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

In Parliament the influence lies within the three biggest political groups.
The Tories have decided not to belong to any of these but have instead isolated themselves in a group with very strange bedfellows from Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Cameron’s preferred partners in Europe are known as homophobic and nationalistic.

Even in the US Cameron’s preference for European partners have been noticed.

“It is hardly good for Britain’s prestige when its European parliamentarians sit with those who have argued the election of a black U.S. president hails the end of civilization,” John Podesta, political advisor to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, wrote recently.

David Cameron’s present European policy was designed for a party in opposition looking for a balance between a number of both extreme and eccentric euro sceptic back benchers and to please British media that hasn´t treated Europe seriously since decades. It is all part of a very British and quite surreal world that only exists on the other side of the Channel.

But just as Thatcher and Major, David Cameron will soon realise that there is another world on the other side of the Channel. The real world.

The one that he and his government will be forced to deal with after the elections. And my guess is that David Cameron will be just as pragmatic as his conservative predecessors Margaret Thatcher and John Major.