The European Union may have to consider a change to its treaties if that’s what is needed to avoid a Brexit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a television interview broadcast on Thursday.
Speaking to the BBC, she said she was “optimistic that if we all want it, we’ll find a good solution.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel tells BBC she's confident changes can be made to keep UK in EU http://t.co/YOu7Lfetdw pic.twitter.com/C2DhJ5R2M9
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 4, 2015
Plans to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU have been actively pushed by Prime Minister David Cameron, who has promised an in/out referendum by 2017. However, treaty change is a very thorny issue over which EU member states have procrastinated in the past: it took 8 years and 2 Irish referendums before the Lisbon Treaty was finally signed in 2009.
“Some of the things that David Cameron is asking for, I can support,” Merkel told the BBC.
However, she wasn’t totally compliant to his requests, saying: “There are other points where we have a different opinion, but we have always been able also to pursue a Europe at different speeds, to find opt-out solutions for example.”
Tighter rules on migrants’ benefits are a priority for Cameron’s Conservatives, as well as moving away from the idea of an “ever closer union” among EU member states, which he described as is “not right for Britain” in an article for the Telegraph.
Asked if UK demands irritated her, the conservative German leader smiled and said: “We know each other… and as German chancellor I can say that I also have my own ideas of how things in the EU should be.
“The EU is a union of 28 member states that have to find compromises. Only when everyone is agreed and happy can we get proper results. That will is there. We have already found many, many solutions for many, many difficult questions — it should be like that in this case too.”