Mr. Roland Freudenstein:

I will begin with the Bloomberg speech. Even though it negated upfront the principle of ever-closer union, another important element which was hardly noticed, even in Britain, was that for the first time a British Head of Government accepted the principle that European integration is an anti-war measure and is geared towards peace among the participating countries. Politically speaking, this is progress, because the Conservatives in Great Britain had never accepted this as a rationale for integration.

The Bloomberg speech itself still held out the prospect of a very constructive approach as far as reforming the Union is concerned. Most of the other member states got very nervous when the British Government started questioning mobility. It has backtracked since then, and has gone from questioning the principle of free movement of people to discussing preventing the abuse of social benefits. We know that in practice there is an overlap between these two areas, but the line of the other big member states, most of all Germany, in this debate has always been that one can do much more at national level to fight the misuse of benefits without ever coming into conflict with European Union legislation or the principles of European integration. This is no problem. For the time being at least this has been understood, and the discourse in Great Britain has moved from questioning the principle of mobility, which is unacceptable, to stating it will do this and that to promote fairness for all the citizens of our countries.

As long as the debate continues in this way, I do not see a major political problem, but there is no guarantee this will happen in the upcoming election campaign in Great Britain. Knowing UKIP, it may make this topic a fundamental question for the future of Great Britain or it may make EU membership, or rather in this case Brexit, a main campaign issue. So far this has not happened and the campaign has been all about economics, the National Health Service and education, but the risk is that over the coming months we will see these European questions of mobility on the one hand and EU membership on the other having a much more prominent role.

We cannot say we have any idea at present what the timescale for Brexit would be. The entry into force of the Lisbon treaty means that for the first time we have a provision for a country to leave, but it is completely impossible to say how long it would take to renegotiate a different status, either along the lines of the European Economic Area or the European Free Trade Association, the Norwegian model and Swiss model as they are called. It is also impossible to say what would be the outcome. It would be very important to negotiate some type of status for both sides.

With regard to the impact on the austerity debate, I see fiscal consolidation losing friends to say it strategically. People would say the European Union would become more southern, which is an oversimplification, but the very principle of solidifying public finances would be weakened through a British exit, which is why Germany would be particularly sad to see it happen.

With regard to the psychological element of British-Irish relations, I am an outsider but my impression is that was extremely important for Ireland to enter the European integration process at the same time and under the same conditions as Great Britain. If this changes there is a risk that for the first time in a very long time British-Irish relations could regress. I absolutely agree this is something we need to prevent.