Angela merkel

David Cameron visits Sweden today to discuss the future of the EU with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The Prime Minister is attempting to block former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker from securing the top job in Brussels. Earlier this year, Fraser Nelson explained how Cameron's 'Northern Alliance' may reshape Europe. If David Cameron were to divide Europe up, he’d make some crude distinctions. There would be the basket cases, like Italy, Spain, Greece, France — examples, by and large, of how countries should not be run.

David Cameron and Angela Merkel held a working dinner last night in Hanover ahead of their visit to a digital trade fair today. Naturally, they discussed Ukraine, and Number 10's readout of the call this morning says 'they both agreed that the priority is to de-escalate the situation and to get Russia to engage in a contact group as swiftly as possible'. Cameron also spoke to Vladimir Putin yesterday, with the Russian President telling the Prime Minister that 'Russia did want to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis' - although presumably in Putin's mind that doesn't involve quite the same level of compromise as those words might initially suggest.

David Cameron pulled out all the ceremonial stops for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to London and the way in which she played along is testament to her desire for the UK to remain within the EU. The lengthy passage of her speech dedicated to British sacrifices during both world wars was a polished diplomatic gesture that played well with Britain’s ideas about itself and its own historical role in Europe. It was a gesture that she did not have to make. However, as she said herself, Merkel’s address could never live up to the hype. This speech was never going to give us all of the answers to the EU’s future, or the viability of David Cameron’s reform and referendum strategy.

How fitting that on the day Angela Merkel pops in to London to natter about EU reform, new figures show a big increase in net migration driven by a rise in immigration from within the European Union to the UK. Net migration in the year to September 2013 rose from 154,000 the previous year to 212,000. This morning, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said that it was 'absolutely the objective' to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by 2015. But today's figures are a blow to the government's chances of doing that. The problem is that while the Home Office is doing its best to control what it can control - non-EU migration fell to 141,000 last year - what it cannot control is out of control. The chart below shows a big rise in EU migration, with numbers doubling in a year.

Angela Merkel is, as James explains in this week's magazine, central to David Cameron's hopes of getting anything meaty at all from his renegotiation and reform of the European Union. Her address to Parliament later this week will be scrutinised for every hint that she might support one reform or another - and for her enthusiasm for supporting Cameron in his quest. So it would be helpful if Merkel said some encouraging things in her speech. But can the Prime Minister suggest anything that would be particularly helpful for the German Chancellor to say?

Angela Merkel is getting the full red carpet treatment when she visits next week. In a 24 hour visit, she'll address both Houses of Parliament and meet the Queen. These honours are being heaped on her because she is Cameron's indispensable ally. Merkel is so vital to Cameron because as the most important person in the most important country in Europe she holds the key to his plan to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership. If she is prepared to offer encouragement to this, then Cameron's plan is credible. If she's not, then it isn't. Several of the other big European players, notably the French, would be happy to cut Britain out of any future treaty talks by simply using an inter-governmental treaty rather than an EU one to define the governance of the Eurozone.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_February_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss Cameron's relationship with Merkel" startat=1204] Listen [/audioplayer]British politicians still prize a visit from the President of the United States above all others. Yet no American President has been as important to a British Prime Minister, in domestic political terms, as the German Chancellor is to David Cameron. Angela Merkel is the person who can both help him keep his party together as it approaches the next election and then, with luck, deliver his promised renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership. For Cameron, Merkel — far more than Barack Obama — is the indispensable ally.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Barack Obama has hit back at European reaction to the Snowden revelations. He tells the magazine that “there are European governments that we know spy on us” and compares many of the European figures complaining about the allegations to the Vichy police officer in the film Casablanca. It’ll be fascinating to see wow those in the European Parliament who want to use this scandal to derail the talks on an EU-US free trade deal react to Obama essentially calling them out on this. Obama does, however, concede that the allegation that the US spied on Angela Merkel’s mobile phone is serious. He concedes that if it happened it was “a breach of trust and I can’t argue with her being aggravated about that.

The German Green Party is having a torrid time. In an election campaign remarkable for static polls, come what may, the collapse of a third of the Green vote has been the most pronounced swing to be found. If in Sunday’s vote they do as poorly as it now looks like they will, this makes it more likely, not less, that they will end up in government. As it gradually became clear that Angela Merkel is staying put, and the real question was who she would end up with as coalition partners, the Greens looked like an unlikely option. For months they’ve put a wide gulf between themselves and Merkel’s Christian Democrats by calling for higher taxes and more redistribution.

This is how the Downing Street spin machine works: a Bad Story that may make your core vote very upset appears in the papers. You brief that you are doing something Very Serious in response to said Bad Story and hope that when it comes to the meeting where you have to raise said Very Serious measure, the media will be getting worked up about a will or the latest pronouncement by a leading light in Ukip about women in the workplace. Today's example of this rule is the briefing to The Times that Downing street wants to put 'curbing the right of EU migrants to benefits at the heart of impending discussions with Brussels aimed at winning back powers for Britain'. This followed yesterday's story about a rise in the number of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants working in the UK.