SPD Euro MPs reject compromise with Britain

TheLocal.de ^ | 01 Jun 2015 15:54 GMT+02:00 | Tom Barfield

[Olog-hai]

German Social Democratic Party (SPD) MEP Jo Leinen told The Local on Monday he was unhappy with comments from European Parliament (EP) President Martin Schulz, who suggested that Britain should be allowed to opt out of the call to work towards “ever closer union” among EU countries.

“The only country that has opted out of European integration with special rules in the past decades has been Great Britain,” Schulz told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “We would only be recognizing what has been true for London for a long time.”

But Social Democratic MEP Jo Leinen told The Local that Schulz’s fellow SPD members saw things differently.

“European integration is an idea that’s been there from the very beginning—that it’s more than an economic space, but also a political community,” Leinen said. “Anyone who wants to get rid of that doesn’t want to belong to a political community, but a single market… Many like me aren’t ready to throw the idea of European community overboard.” …

[Olog-hai]

More vindication of Thatcher’s view of the EU, where Germany is “dominant” and imperialistic (although she didn’t state that explicitly). The SPD hacks are being very open about it now.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Olog-hai.