‘UK may quit EU unless reform delivered’

British Chancellor George Osborne is expected to warn the European Union (EU) that the UK will no longer remain a member state unless the bloc delivers political and economic reform.

“There is a simple choice for Europe: reform or decline. Our determination is clear: to deliver the reform, and then let the people decide,” Osborne will say in a conference on Europe, planned to be held in London on Wednesday.

The speech is organized by the pro-reform think tank Open Europe and the Fresh Start group of Conservative MPs.

The British chancellor will call on the EU to halt the continent’s “continuing decline” and long-term stagnation by curbing welfare spending and backing business, jobs and free trade.

He will also warn that Europe’s share of global output risks being halved by 2030 while the world’s economic power is “moving eastwards and southwards”.

Meanwhile, Osborne is set to reaffirm the Tory-led government’s commitment to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership before putting them on an in-out vote.

This comes as a referendum bill on the UK’s membership of the EU has reached its second reading in the House of Lords, Britain’s upper house of the parliament.

On January 10, peers started discussing the Conservative-backed bill, which would set in law a commitment to hold an in-out vote on the UK’s membership of the EU during the early part of the next parliament, by the end of 2017 at the latest.

Osborne’s ultimatum also comes less than a week after ninety-five British Conservative lawmakers demanded the authority for the House of Commons to veto laws from the EU.

In a letter to the British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron, the group of backbenchers said the parliament should be able to block EU legislations and repeal measures that threaten the UK’s “national interest.”

SSM/NN

 

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/01/15/345683/uk-may-quit-eu-unless-reform-delivered/

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