European treaty: How the media reported the Brussels agreement
Treaty with no safeguards ‘not in our national interest’, said David Cameron after using UK's veto on 23-nation deal
Last night's European treaty was agreed by 23 countries, but not Britain, after eurozone nations refused to let the UK opt out of a financial transactions tax.
Following the Brussels summit David Cameron, the prime minister, explained his decision to use a veto on the deal.
“Where we can’t be given safeguards, it is better to be on the outside," he said. "It’s not easy when you are in a room with everyone saying, forget about your safeguards.
"I have to say, it’s not in our national interest, I don’t want to put it before my parliament, I couldn’t do that with a clear conscience.”
John Cridland, the CBI director-general, said: “The mist is still clearing on the implications of the new treaty. New fiscal rules seem to be coming together but the all-important question of lender of last resort does not seem to have been resolved yet. The markets will decide if what has been done over the last two days is enough.
“The politics of this issue are clearly complex and we look forward to the prime minister’s full statement in the House.”
Media reaction to the agreement
The Financial Times said, in its piece entitled Eurozone countries sign-up to closer ties, that the European Union leaders had “failed to agree to change the EU’s treaties” and that the new intergovernmental treaty would “probably have less teeth”.
Under the headline Eurozone countries go it alone with new treaty that excludes Britain, the Guardian focused on the risk of the UK being left out of future EU negotiations, saying: “Britain is facing isolation after David Cameron vetoed a revision of the Lisbon treaty”.
The Times also hinted at the risk of isolation, with the online headline Britain left outside of new EU treaty after Cameron veto, above a piece that described a “rancorous summit when 23 countries signed up to a new euro-plus group with Britain on the outside after David Cameron wielded his veto”.
The Daily Telegraph went with EU suffers worst split in history as David Cameron blocks treaty change – and said “the European Union suffered the most damaging split in its 54-year history” – while Benedict Brogan supported Mr Cameron’s veto in a blogpost.
Paris-based Le Monde, meanwhile, made mention of British non-involvement in the intro paragraph to its eurozone lead piece. It wrote that the “new agreement to reinforce budgetary discipline … has been adopted only by the 17 eurozone members, and other volunteer countries, because of Britain’s refusal”.