British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday he saw no need for a referendum on a new European Union treaty while EU president Portugal ruled out reopening a delicate compromise on its contents. Britain will insist that "every single detail" of the conditions it demanded in an outline deal reached in Brussels last month is included in the final treaty, Brown said.
"The work of the next few months (is) to ensure that what were 'red lines' for Britain are in detail part of the treaty," Brown said after talks with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, his first meeting with a foreign leader since taking over from Tony Blair on June 27.
"If that were the case then I would see no reason to recommend to the British people that there should be a referendum," Brown said in his clearest statement yet on his position on a referendum. The new treaty is aimed at making the EU work more smoothly now it has expanded to 27 members. Britain's opposition Conservatives say former prime minister Blair promised a referendum on a proposed EU constitution and accuse the government of breaking its promise by now opposing a referendum on the treaty.
Brown's government argues that the proposed treaty is much less ambitious than the constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 and does not need to be put to a vote.
At the June EU summit, Blair's last, London won an exemption from the application in Britain of a legally binding EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Socrates said he wanted to wrap up the new treaty as soon as possible. Portugal, which took over the EU's rotating presidency last week, wants to open an Inter-Governmental Conference on the treaty this month and finish it in October and Brown agreed with this timetable, he said.
The agreement reached with Britain at the EU summit was very clear and he did not anticipate any problems with Britain during the detailed negotiations, Socrates added.
But, in an apparent allusion to Polish concerns over planned changes to EU voting rights, Socrates stressed Portugal had no authority to reopen the negotiating mandate. Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said Poland will fight for a concession it says it won at the summit giving groups of countries short of a blocking minority a right to delay EU decisions for up to two years.