Britain may need treaty change promise in talks with EU - minister

By Guy Faulconbridge MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron may need a promise of changes to European Union treaties to secure concessions he is seeking to keep Britain in the bloc but exploratory talks are going well, Europe Minister David Lidington said. Cameron is seeking to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the bloc it joined in 1973 as the 'in' and 'out' campaigns prepare for a referendum on membership before the end of 2017. Opinion polls suggest voters are almost evenly split, and crises in the EU over Greek debt and a surge of migrants may be turning some Britons against staying in the 28-nation bloc. Cameron has said the renegotiation is "bloody hard work" and while he wants to argue for Britain to stay in a reformed EU, he is ruling nothing out if the concessions he wants are blocked. "We have got technical talks going on between officials - they are mapping out various options for both the policy scope and the legal and institutional framework that will be needed to deliver any deals," Lidington told Reuters in the northern city of Manchester where the ruling Conservative Party is holding its annual conference. "It was very important to have those technical discussions so the options are there for the leaders. So those (talks) are going well," he said, adding that he had found a lot of goodwill among other EU states to reach a deal. Lidington, 59, has been the junior foreign minister responsible for European affairs since 2010 and is an expert on the EU's institutional plumbing, knows Britain's partners well and is one of Cameron's inner team running the renegotiation. He would not be drawn on what a possible deal would look like but said a commitment to treaty change - a long and complicated process which others are reluctant to embark on - may be needed to make it legally watertight. "We may well need to have treaty change or commitments to treaty change," he said. Cameron formally began his renegotiation with a brief summary of Britain's objectives to other leaders at a meeting in Brussels in June and European Council President Donald Tusk has said leaders will discuss the issue again in December. "I don't know at this stage how conclusive that will be or whether it will just be an interim stage - obviously things like the Greek crisis and then the refugee crisis just eat up a certain amount of bandwidth," Lidington said. "If it is done by December fine, but if it takes longer than December then so be it and, you know, there is no panic about it," Lidington said of a possible deal. 'DIFFICULT TALKS'? If a deal could be agreed for December then Britain could hold a referendum within about four months, indicating early summer as the earliest likely date. "We have always been of the view that is substance that matters more than speed," Lidington said. Cameron, who opposes any further transfer of sovereignty to the EU but says voters are unhappy with the current settlement, has asked for changes in four areas: sovereignty, fairness, competitiveness and immigration. He has started a second round of diplomacy with EU leaders but Britain has not put any proposals in writing yet. Cameron wants a commitment that the goal of "ever closer union" in the EU treaty's preamble should not apply to Britain. He also seeks protection of British financial interests outside the euro area, better regulation to promote competitiveness to create jobs and growth, and tighter welfare rules to reduce the incentives for migration within the EU. EU officials say there has been considerable progress in recent weeks to establish a technical framework for negotiations but diplomats from Britain's EU partners say they still have little idea of what precisely London will ask for. SOME GOOD NEWS FOR CAMERON Cameron had good news on Tuesday in two cases before the EU's supreme court on issues related to the renegotiation. A European Court of Justice adviser recommended that judges dismiss a case in which the European Commission charged Britain with setting welfare rules that discriminated against non-British EU citizens. And judges upheld the legality of an automatic ban on the right to vote for some prisoners in France, offering some legal comfort to Britain in its battle on that issue with the European Court of Human Rights, a separate non-EU institution. Lidington said he was optimistic Europe would become more competitive, more democratic and more flexible, but that Britain wanted a "clearly irreversible and legally binding" deal. "There are some elements - most obviously on single market reform and trade deals - where you don't have to touch the treaties at all," he said. "But there are other things where we may well need to have treaty change or commitments to treaty change." Other leaders are loath to make such a commitment for fear of a negotiating free-for-all and losing referendums required in some countries to ratify treaty changes. But Lidington said that he saw from ministers in other European governments "a lot of goodwill towards helping the prime minister to achieve an outcome that he will believe will be satisfactory and he can recommend to the British people." (Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Editing by Paul Taylor and Timothy Heritage)