United Kingdom

Tower Bridge in London (Photo: Blake Evans-Pritchard)

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has a population of 61.63 million and an area of 244,000 km². It joined the EU on 1 January 1973 without holding a referendum.

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised the British voters a referendum on continued membership by 2017.

By then he hopes to have renegotiated certain sensitive topics and can present the voters for a better EU in the eyes of the British EU sceptical voters. Britain will have the Presidency in the EU just before the referendum.

Notes

• Harold Wilson's Labour government renegotiated membership conditions and held a referendum on continued membership in 1975. 

• Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher negotiated a British rebate in 1984. 

• Prime Minister John Major kept Britain outside the social protocol, which was annexed to the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991. 

• Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted the social protocol after "New Labour" gained power in 1997. 

• The UK Government was represented in the Convention on the Future of Europe by the former minister for Europe, Peter Hain. 

• In April 2004, Tony Blair accepted that the European Constitution should be adopted in the EU by a referendum. 

• In 2007 Blair took away the promise of referendum and was succeeded by Gordon Brown. 

• In 2008, a British businessperson Stewart Wheeler started a court case against the government to obtain a referendum. He failed. 

• In the European elections in June 2009 the UKIP, party for withdrawal of the EU gained the same number of seats as the governing Labour party. 

• The Conservative party leader, David Cameron, said he would call for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if he would become the prime minister before the last ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.  

• 3 November 2009 Vaclav Klaus signed the Treaty as the last country. Cameron then said he would negotiate certain British opt-outs. 

• In July 2009, the British Conservatives initiated a new EU critical group in the European Parliament called European Conservatives and Reformists, ECR.
• In 2014 the Scots voted on possible independence from the UK. The majority of voters wanted to stay in the UK.
  
  

Links

Foreign and Commonwealth Office http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029390554  

Official websites http://www.europarl.eu.int/enlargement_new/member_states_Links_en.htm#uk