Interior Cumbre

Aquí, un artículo imprescindible para comprender lo que pasó en la cumbre entre Cameron y los Merkosy. Siento no poder reproducirlo, porque es muy largo. Intento resumir lo más importante.
Primero, días ante de la cumbre, Merkel y Cameron tienen un encuentro en el que Merkel le promete que se incluirá en el tratado las reivindicaciones de RU.
Segundo, Cameron y su ministro de exteriores Hague, saben que Merkel es especialista en ablandar las cosas y luego presentarse en el minuto decisivo diciendo "lo siento", esto es lo que hay. Por ello preparan un plan para defenderse de la encerrona. Entre otras razones, porque en su partido les pueden forzar a presentar un referendum -que haría caer al gobierno- si vienen de la cumbre con las manos vacías.
Mientras, Sarkozy le había prometido a Cameron algo similar, que no pondría obstáculos a sus reivindicaciones.
Los Merkozy odian a Cameron, no confían en él, desde que en 2005 sacó a su partido del Partido Popular Europeo, el partido que integra a la derecha europea. En la reunión del PPE en Marsella, antes de la cumbre, Ella y Sarko configuran un plan para sacar de la cumbre un Tratado intergubernamental, el acuerdo más vinculante.
El día nueve, en la Cumbre, como era de esperar, Merkel anuncia a Cameron:

Flanked by Mr Hague, the prime minister watched stony-faced as the German chancellor said: “This is terrible – this is an existential issue for us. We can’t go your way.” She told him an exemption for the industry that caused the financial crisis was politically impossible.

 A las dos de la madrugada, después de 5 horas de discusiones sobre el pacto fiscal, cuando todo el mundo está agotado, Cameron deja caer sus peticiones. Sarkozy le dice:

Mr Sarkozy was characteristically blunt. “David, we will not pay you to save the euro,” he said, according to one account. He went on to rebuke Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the freshly elected Danish prime minister, for the temerity to speak up for a deal at 27. “You’re an out, a small out, and you’re new. We don’t want to hear from you,” Mr Sarkozy said.

At this crucial point, Mr Cameron stopped using the BlackBerry with which he had been communicating with advisers. His team outside was cut off. An offer was made, initiated by Mr Barroso, to insert treaty language to protect the EU single market. Mr Cameron would not budge, readying for tough negotiation.

After little more than 20 minutes, a veto declaration came, not from Mr Cameron but from Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian who as president of the European Council chaired the session. There was no vote. With little warning, Mr Van Rompuy closed the discussion of treaty change at 27, saying the UK could not be accommodated. That angered some British officials. “He ducked it and chickened out and made a sprint to a finish line that no one wanted to finish at,” one says.

Following a short break, Mr Cameron played his final card: refusing to let EU institutions support an intergovernmental treaty (lean este link). His bargaining position relied on Hubert Legal, the aptly named head of the Council legal service. At a summit preparatory meeting, Mr Legal’s advice stressed the constraints on a pact outside the EU treaties. But his advice to the summit had a different emphasis.

 ... Mr Sarkozy was adamant the deal had to be settled before markets opened. There was a scramble to agree a communiqué – detailing potentially fundamental changes to fiscal sovereignty – in the middle of the night under absurd time pressure. “You can’t imagine the chaos,” says one who was there. 

 Those in attendance say Mr Cameron emerged as chirpy as ever, even when sharing a tiny lift with Ms Merkel. A French official casts the outcome as almost inevitable, given Mr Cameron’s bid. “We were not very surprised,” says one senior official. “There was no aggression, no animosity, no regret either. It is a domestic political constraint in the UK ... What can one do?”

One British official at the summit says there was little alternative by that point. “When the lights come up and you realise there is a big Franco-German wall in front of you, it is very hard to change course.”

Downing Street insiders admit British interests in Brussels have been damaged – as Mr Clegg has warned. But they say that Mr Cameron ran a bigger risk – and faced a bigger clash with Europe – if he came back from Brussels with a deal that was later wrecked in the House of Commons.

Es que en Inglaterra hay un Parlamento de verdad, representativo  de verdad de las fuerzas políticas, que no traga tan fácilmente como por ejemplo el nuestro.
¿Qué queda? queda la confusión de no saber exactamente qué se acordó en la Cumbre:

THREE SOLUTIONS TO ONE CRISIS

When the leaders of the 27 European Union member states gathered in Brussels this month, their meeting was billed – not for the first time – as a “summit to save the euro”.

The main topic was a treaty to instil long-term fiscal discipline in the crisis-ridden eurozone – a German initiative to ensure the taxpayers of Europe’s richest country that they would never again have to bail out profligate states.

The deal involved much closer fiscal integration and semi-automatic sanctions to enforce budget discipline.

There were three main options for implementation, which split opinion across the bloc.

Berlin preferred full treaty change, which involves reopening existing EU agreements. This has the strongest legal weight. But it is fraught with political difficulties and triggers referendums in some states.

Another way forward is to go outside the EU treaty with an intergovernmental pact. This uses a narrower legal base and there are restrictions on EU institutions enforcing the rules. Some states still face ratification difficulties.

The third option, backed by the European Commission, involves using existing treaties to make room for a new pact. This was ruled out by Germany, but is popular with smaller countries.

O sea, la nada.  No sé como pretenden que esto sea vinculante, aparte de ser el camino más largo y doloroso, y más ineficaz, para salir del hoyo. ¿Qué Cameron ha tenido la culpa? de qué de salvarnos de un reforzamiento de la dictadura germana, que hubiera estado capacitada para usar las instituciones europeas contra nuestra política interior?
Ya sé que aquí no hay sentimiento de independencia nacional, que es el factor básico de una democracia verdadera. Pero deberíamos estar agradecidos a Cameron por haber frenado el expreso Merkozy, un expreso que destruye todo a su paso.