Germany open to reforms to keep UK in EU
Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday vowed Germany would play a "constructive" role to help keep Britain in the EU and work with Prime Minister David Cameron to reform the 28-nation bloc.
Offering a warm and conciliatory tone to visiting Cameron she said Berlin was open to a compromise on London's demands.
"Where there's a will, there is a way," said Merkel, stressing that Germany would not rule out changing EU founding treaties, a tricky issue since it requires approval by all member states.
As both sides discuss a list of issues, "you cannot say that treaty change is a total impossibility," she said at a joint news conference.
Cameron, after his second-term election win this month, has vowed to push strongly for EU reforms and "a better deal for Britain" ahead of an in-out membership referendum he has promised by 2017.
Merkel said that "on the German side there is a clear hope -- and of course this will be decided by the British people -- that Britain will stay on as a member of the European Union".
Cameron was in Berlin as part of a European charm offensive that earlier took him to The Hague, Paris and Warsaw, to sell his shopping list of proposed reforms.
These included stricter requirements for EU migrants in claiming British social welfare benefits, and for London to be able to opt out of an EU commitment to "ever closer union".
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