“I responded in good faith,” Mr. Cameron said in the televised speech, explaining his actions last week. “We were simply asking for a level playing field.”
Reiterating his reasons for the veto decision, Mr. Cameron said he could not agree to the changes because they would have threatened the competitive future of London’s financial services industry, a critical part of Britain’s economy. He also said he had done nothing to compromise Britain’s membership in the European Union itself.
“Britain remains a full member of the E.U. and the events of the last week do nothing to change that,” Mr. Cameron said. “Our membership of the EU is vital to our national interest. We are a trading nation and we need the single market for trade, investment and jobs.”
The British prime minister, leader of the Conservatives, is facing a rift with Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior coalition partner in Mr. Cameron’s government, who told the BBC on Sunday that Mr. Cameron’s decision to reject the proposed European treaty changes had left Britain in danger of being “isolated and marginalized” in Europe. Mr. Clegg added that if he had been in charge, “of course things would have been different.”
Mr. Cameron deployed his power of veto at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels after failing to secure what he called vital safeguards for the health of London’s financial sector. But with the 26 other members of the European Union either agreeing to the proposed plan outright or saying they would put the matter before their Parliaments, Mr. Cameron’s action on Friday left Britain alone on the margins at a time of great upheaval on the Continent, with the European Union struggling to resolve its financial crisis.
In an unusually blunt acknowledgment of the divide, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that, while he and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had done “everything in order that the English should be part of the agreement” at the Brussels summit, the reality was that “henceforth there are clearly two Europes — one seeking greater solidarity and regulation, and the other attached to the exclusive logic of the single market.”
“You have to understand this is the birth of a different Europe — the Europe of the euro zone, in which the watchwords will be the convergence of economies, budget rules and fiscal policy, a Europe where we are going to work together on reforms enabling all our countries to be more competitive without renouncing our social model,” he told the newspaper Le Monde.
But Mr. Sarkozy also referred to a broader relationship with Britain, despite the ever closer ties between Paris and Berlin in addressing the crisis in the euro zone, of which Britain is not a member.
“Does the importance of the understanding with Germany mean that there is nothing to be done with London? No,” he said. “We intervened in Libya with the United Kingdom and the prime minister, David Cameron, was courageous. With London we share an attachment to nuclear energy and a strong cooperation in defense.”
He also rejected an interviewer’s suggestion that Britain should leave the European Union’s single market — a vast trade zone stretching from Ireland to Scandinavia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. “We need Great Britain,” Mr. Sarkozy said.
The developments in Brussels brought less ambiguous criticism from Britain’s opposition Labour Party.
“This is the first veto in history not to stop something,” David Miliband, a former Labour foreign secretary told the BBC on Monday. “The plans are going right ahead. It was a phantom veto against a phantom threat.”
“David Cameron didn’t actually stop anything because the other 26 are going on and the provisions of the treaty would not have weakened our rights and freedoms one iota,” Mr. Miliband said.
The Labour opposition was intent on echoing those complaints in Parliament, seeking to dent the enthusiasm of the dominant Conservatives and to highlight divisions within the governing coalition.
Many euroskeptic Conservatives, who want Britain to renegotiate its relationship with the European Union, were hailing the outcome of the Brussels summit as a victory. But several officials suggested that both the Conservatives and the more pro-European Liberal Democrats wanted to avoid a widening of the rift between them.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d74557484a0e40cdd6ef3c19951c4fc3
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