Free Republic

Germany has raised the pressure on British Prime Minister David Cameron to seek an agreement on the EU’s long-term budget at a summit in Brussels today (23 November), by floating an alternative deal that would sideline Britain and neutralize its veto. … If confirmed today, the “Plan B” would work in two steps. First, EU leaders, recognizing the impossibility of finding an agreement at 27, would issue a statement at today’s meeting saying budget talks will resume in January 2013, at another summit.In the meantime, they would reach a political agreement on the bloc’s long-term finances—without the UK—and confirm it...

Five leading EU countries, but not the UK, have said the Union needs a new military “structure” to manage overseas operations. The foreign and defense ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain issued the call in a joint communiqué after a meeting in Paris on Thursday (15 November). The paper says: “We are convinced that the EU must set up, within a framework yet to be defined, true civilian-military structures to plan and conduct missions and operations.” … The communiqué also calls for more “pooling and sharing” of EU defense hardware in the context of crisis-related budget cuts. It...