Door still open for David Cameron’s benefit reforms

Next up on the British prime minister’s arm-twisting tour: Viktor Orbán.

David Cameron has found a more receptive audience in several European countries this week as he continues to push for a controversial ban on welfare benefits for EU migrants.

After getting encouraging signals from key German and Polish politicians that they would be willing to accept some restrictions on the benefits, the British prime minister will travel Thursday to Budapest, where he will discuss the issue with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

For the moment Cameron is sticking to his proposal for a four-year restriction on benefits, which he says will be crucial to convincing the British public to vote to stay in the EU in a referendum.

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But he has also been leaving some wiggle-room as he talks to EU leaders, saying that he is willing to entertain other proposals. And he has been spinning the benefits reform proposal as something that’s good for all governments, not just Britain’s. That will be central to his message to Orbán, according to officials.

“Cameron’s argument is that it’s in the self-interest of Eastern European member states to limit the high level of immigration of skilled workforce towards the U.K.,” said one source familiar with the discussions.

That message may resonate with Orbán, who has said he wants to stem the flow of migrants from Hungary to other EU countries.

Cameron has emphasized his openness to considering alternative ideas on the benefits issue in recent meetings with EU leaders, including at a summit in December in which he laid out his reform plans in detail. At the summit there was widespread opposition from other leaders to the benefits proposal on the grounds that it discriminated unfairly against EU citizens.

According to officials, Cameron has suggested that simply reducing the waiting period for migrant benefits to three years — a proposal tabled by leaders from Germany and France — is no less discriminatory than his original four-year ban.

Downing Street is still waiting for the European Commission to propose “alternative solutions” for reform on the issue of migrants “exporting” welfare benefits to children who remain in their home country. Among the proposals said to be under consideration is to create a sliding-scale for child-benefit payments based on the living standard of the home country of the children.

Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said the negotiations are “an ongoing process. Work progresses in the hope of an agreement in February.”

None of the reform proposals have been put on paper yet, either by the Commission or the Council of Ministers, where the real negotiations will play out among member countries. But Cameron has said he’s hoping to strike a deal at the February EU summit. He has promised to hold a referendum on the U.K.’s membership of the EU before 2017.

Cameron will be riding high into his meeting with Orbán after senior leaders from the German Christian Social Union — the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats — voiced their support this week for the benefits ban proposal.

Before sitting down with Cameron, Orbán was scheduled to have a meeting with leaders of the new Polish government on Wednesday to coordinate responses from the Visegrád group of Eastern European countries to the British reform proposals, among other foreign affairs issues.

The Poles originally took a hardline on Cameron’s benefit ban, calling it “discriminatory” against Polish workers who make up the bulk of the EU migrants in the U.K.

But the door for Cameron may still be open in Poland, whose stance appears to have softened after Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski suggested Warsaw would be willing to accept the benefits compromise in exchange for a greater NATO presence on the country’s Russian border.