This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Jean-Claude Piris.

Jean-Cle-Pierris ran the legal service of the Council of Ministers of the EU for over 20 years

and in that role had a leading part to play in drafting all the treaties that now govern the European Union.

So nobody knows more about treaties and treaty change and treaty abilities than Jean-Clob Paris.

So Jean-Claude, from your point of view, to the extent we know what the British government wants to try to achieve in their negotiation with Brussels,

do you think it will be successful this negotiation?

I think yes.

At the end it will be successful because nobody is crazy and it's both the interests of the United Kingdom

and of the European Union of its other member states that the UK stays as a full member and acting

with a lot of influence in the EU.

Okay, but to the extent we know what the government in Britain actually wants, they have yet, as you know, to formally put on the table the negotiating points,

but we have an idea from a couple of

speeches by the British Prime Minister, by an article, by the British Foreign Minister, what

the kind of things they want to achieve. How many of these things do you think are UK-specific,

and how many are actually relevance to most, if not all, members of the European Union?

Yeah, first of all, you know, even the authorities of the UK did not know exactly what they wanted,

because all this started with internal politics as usual.

And there was a big problem for the Tories before the last elections and the UKIP was winning

ground and so on and so they decided that as I was a kind of malaise in the public opinion on the EU affairs to put EU affairs in the first range.

And then they had to find what are the exact subjects which could be useful in that kind of point of view.

Well, in that context there, what are the things that we think the British government will be asking Brussels to accept as part of a negotiation that you think will cause the most difficulty with its European partners?

Yeah.

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