ABSTRACT
On 23 January 2013, David Cameron, prime minister of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government, announced that a Conservative government, if elected after the next general election (May 2015), would arrange a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU). The referendum would be held by the end of 2017 and after a renegotiation of the country’s relationship with the EU. On this occasion Cameron identified what he later described as the most important change that he wanted to achieve in the process of renegotiation: an opt-out for Britain from the EU’s founding principle and first item in the preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome – ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’. That opt-out was agreed as part of the final, renegotiated settlement of Britain’s relationship with the EU at the European Council meeting of 17/ 18 February 2016.
