UK's Cameron reveals EU renegotiation terms

Britain’s David Cameron has insisted there would be no second vote if his country chooses in an upcoming referendum to leave the European Union.

In a long-awaited speech detailing his plans to renegotiate Britain’s membership terms of the 28-country bloc, the UK premier said Tuesday that it was of "cardinal importance for the United Kingdom" that the EU recognised the rights of its members who did not use the euro.

In addition to new rules around the single currency, he said he wanted the EU to address three other issues: a greater say for national parliaments in EU affairs, a crisis of European competitiveness in the world, and the need for greater migration controls.

Cameron’s remarks to the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House came as he wrote a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, to begin the "formal phase" of Britain’s EU membership renegotiation.

On the euro, Cameron said his country "never will be" part of the Eurozone, but said his country risked being discriminated against through plans for further integration.

"Non-euro members like Britain, which are outside the Eurozone, need certain safeguards in order to protect the single market and our ability to decide its rules, and to ensure we face neither discrimination nor additional costs from the integration of the Eurozone, because the European Union and the Eurozone are not the same thing," he said.

"If the European Union were to evolve into a single currency club where those outside the single currency are pushed aside and overruled, then it would no longer be a club for us."

He said national parliaments were "the main source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU" and needed a greater say over law-making in the bloc.

"We are not suggesting a veto for every single national parliament. We acknowledge that in a European Union of twenty-eight, that would mean gridlock.

"But we want to see a new arrangement where groups of national parliaments can come together and reject European laws which are not in their national interest."

Cameron said the EU risked falling to a competitive disadvantage as "other nations across the world soar ahead" and needs a target to lessen what he called "the burden on business" by reducing the number of new business regulations and cutting existing ones.

The British prime minister added that freedom of movement "has never been an unqualified right" and needed to operate "on a more sustainable basis".

Citizens of new EU member states should not benefit from unrestricted movement until their economies converge with existing members, he said, adding that the U.K. needed more powers to "reduce the current very high level of migration from within the EU into the U.K".

Bans on re-entry for those taking part in sham marriages and the power to deport criminals are among the changes needed, Cameron said.