British PM Cameron pledges referendum on staying in EU
Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday promised to hold a referendum giving British people the choice of staying in or leaving the European Union if his party wins the next general election.
Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday promised to hold a referendum by the end of 2017 giving British people the choice of staying in or leaving the EU if his party wins the next election.
In a long-awaited speech in London, Cameron said he wants to first renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Union because “public disillusionment with the EU is at an all-time high”.
He said: “When we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in-or-out choice.”
Cameron said that if his party wins an outright victory in the general election, it would hold a referendum during the first half of the new five-year parliament, by the end of 2017.
He warned that if the EU failed to bring in the reforms that he wanted, Britain could “drift” out of the 27-member bloc.
Cameron said the EU was grappling with the euro zone, “a crisis of European competitiveness” and the gap between the EU and its citizens had “grown dramatically in recent years”.