Untenable position

British Prime Minister David Cameron wants to avoid a head-on clash with Brussels after all. Prior to delivering his long-awaited speech on curbing immigration, he floated a number of ideas. For starters, he announced an immigration emergency brake that would bar additional EU migrants from entering the UK. Britain, he suggested, was simply full, the social welfare system extremely strained, and it was impossible to integrate any more newcomers.

That was a message, first and foremost, directed at immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, EU members who have been free to look for work across the bloc since the beginning of the year. The proposal was the subject of some discussion until German Chancellor Angela Merkel unceremoniously put an end to it. Germany, she said, would not weaken EU guidelines that provide for the public's freedom of movement. Her statement made it clear that Cameron would not get the support he'd have needed to radically revise European treaties.

Discriminatory proposals

That led Cameron to take a stab at a slightly less provocative kind of discrimination. Under his new plan, EU immigrants in the UK are to be excluded from receiving certain social welfare benefits, as well as access to social housing and benefits for children living elsewhere in Europe. These are the proposals that would apply to migrants with jobs. Immigrants unable to find employment within six months could be expelled.

Brussels reacted with restraint. The British proposals were part of a debate, and they would be examined "carefully" and "without drama," officials said. It was an attempt to prevent future outbursts in the ongoing dispute with London. Even so, it is clear that European rules disallow unequal treatment of British employees and those from other EU countries.

Cameron's U-turns

The British prime minister's own strategic errors are now catching up with him. When he entered office, he pledged to reduce the number of immigrants to under 100,000 per year in a bid to reach out to the right wing of his own Conservative party and to thwart the rise of UKIP's right-wing populists.

Yet that promise was nonsense. First of all, there is no way he'll be able to keep it, secondly, he is going to find himself increasingly cornered by the euro-skeptics regardless of what he says or does. In fact the most recent immigration statistics show that the UK's relatively good economic situation has drawn over a quarter of million people to Britain, nearly half of whom are citizens of other EU member states. It's especially the EU immigrants Cameron now wants to scare away. But the measures he announced won't serve that purpose as many eastern European employees will be content to work for Britain's minimum wage - even if they aren't permitted to receive additional welfare benefits.

In his attempts to define his stance on Europe, Cameron is lurching from one pothole to the next. He promised Britons he would completely re-evaluate and re-arrange their relationship with Europe - another far-reaching promise he will not be able to keep.

More and more British voters must feel tricked by the government when it comes to European issues. This, in turn, may come back to haunt Cameron in the 2015 general election and lead to further success of UKIP's euro-skeptics.