British Prime Minister David Cameron will announce, at the EU summit, measures to stop the influx of a record number of migrants, as well as the beginning of negotiations on changing British ties with the EU.
According to official data, the number of migrants reached 2014 in 318.000. In a statement, before taking off for the summit, Cameron announced that he plans to treat illegal work as a criminal offense and that the authorities should be given the opportunity to confiscate illegal earnings, reports Reuters.
Cameron is under increasing pressure to reduce immigration growth in order to strengthen the economy. He will be focused mainly on the domestic public, but the timing of his speech is planned so that EU leaders also see it as a message.
Cameron expects to agree with the EU that Britain can severely limit migrants' access to welfare. "A strong country is not one that builds a bridge, but one that controls immigration," Cameron will say, according to a pre-prepared text of the speech.
A sign of hope for Britain is given by the invitation of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, to the British minister, George Osborne, to come to Berlin to discuss possible reforms.
Germany wants to reform the Eurozone legislation, which could happen at the same time as the British one.
Osborne accused the EU of walking in the sleep of the global economy. The British discussion with the EU has alarmed some companies, and the latest is Airbus, which believes that Britain's exit from the EU carries huge risks.
Cameron failed in his last term to deliver on a promise to reduce the flow of migrants below 100.000 a year, but has now promised to reshape Britain's ties with the EU, ahead of a referendum on membership, by the end of 2017.
He wants to force migrants to the EU to wait four years, before being included in the system of social benefits, and he wants the possibility to deport the unemployed after six months. If the negotiations end earlier, Cameron made it clear that the referendum could be held even before 2017.
Some EU countries, including France, have ruled out the possibility of changing the founding treaties with the EU, so that they correspond to Britain, but Cameron is still convinced that there will be such changes.
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