‘Need to understand UK’s EU reforms’

LONDON: France is willing to help Britain´s push to reform the European Union ahead of a referendum on the country´s membership of the bloc, but remains unsure about some key British proposals, French economy minister Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
"My willingness is to help to find an agreement and win the referendum, but my priority today is to understand much more clearly the British requirements in order to avoid any misunderstanding," Macron told reporters in London.
Britain´s Conservative government has promised a vote on EU membership before the end of 2017. Prime Minister David Cameron says he will join the campaign to stay in if he can renegotiate the relationship.
Macron said he had held discussions with Cameron and finance minister George Osborne and shared their ideas about cutting back on red tape and regulation.But he did not have a clear view on what Britain wanted to change in the relationship between EU countries in the single-currency euro zone and those outside it.
Osborne has said Britain, as a non-euro zone country, must be able to ensure that it can protect its interests in areas such as the country´s huge financial services industry.Macron also said Britain should consider being part of Europe´s banking union.
"If the point is we want be part of the sort of EU market for financial services but be completely ring-fenced from the banking union, it´s fine but I think that sometimes in life you have a sort of reality principle which just doesn´t allow you to have everything you want," he said. Sources close to Macron have said France wanted to avoid cries of victory from Cameron if he managed to extract enough concessions from his EU partners, in case that pushed other EU countries to present their own lists of demands. Macron, in his meeting with reporters in London on Thursday, cited Europe´s disjointed approach to dealing with the refugee crisis as an example of how countries acting on their own agendas risked undermining the EU. "The refugee situation is probably one of the best possible examples - an a la carte Europe is not feasible because it just means progressively you kill the European idea and the functioning of Europe," he said.