DAVID Cameron has begun his EU charm offensive to reform the Brussels bloc in earnest, over dinner at Chequers with Jean Claude Juncker, whose appointment as its top bureaucrat the Prime Minister last year branded a "serious mistake".
The wining and dining of Mr Juncker is the start of a slow and careful Euro process, that is likely to take at least a year and whose aim is to secure reforms, most notably a clampdown on benefit tourism.
A UK Government source said: "It is an opportunity for the PM to underline why he is doing this and the views of Britain about the EU, the case for renegotiation and not sticking with the status quo."
The talks at the Prime Minister's official country residence in Buckinghamshire were expected to touch on the broad areas where Mr Cameron thinks change is needed and "there will be some discussions about how we taken them forward", the source said, although the top-level meeting was not expected to go into great depth about the reforms.
Greeting Mr Juncker at the rural retreat, Mr Cameron told him they were meeting in the room reputedly used by Winston Churchill to write some of his most famous wartime speeches. "Think of 'we'll fight them on the beaches' " he told him before they sat down for a dinner of pork belly, bacon and seasonal vegetables - promising to later show him the ex-premier's brandy glass.
Exchanging pleasantries before getting down to talks, Mr Cameron noted that it was a bank holiday, adding: "My wife has taken the children away on holiday and I am working."
The pair are expected to have lengthy talks over dinner - which will start with spring salad and finish with lime bavarois, Downing Street said.
However, UKIP MP Douglas Carswell said the PM's promised renegotiation would be "more or less worthless".
"We now know he's not seeking treaty change and none of the new deal that he is looking for will apply specifically to Britain. None of it is going to fundamentally change our relationship with Europe," he added.
Meantime, reports out of France suggested it and Germany had agreed a deal to integrate the eurozone further but without reopening the EU's treaties in what would be a blow to Mr Cameron's referendum campaign.
The proposals are to be put to the EU summit in Brussels in late June, when the PM is also expected to unveil his desired shopping list of changes to win support for keeping Britain in the EU.
Mr Cameron has previously called for a reopening of the treaties to enable eurozone members to integrate more closely while giving the UK a chance to repatriate powers from Brussels.
The Franco-German agreement is said to call for eurozone reforms in four areas "developed in the framework of the current treaties in the years ahead".
On Thursday, the PM will fly to Denmark for a working breakfast with his counterpart Helle Thorning-Schmidt. He will then travel on to the Netherlands to meet Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte before ending the day with talks over dinner at the Elysee Palace with French President Francois Hollande.
On Friday, Mr Cameron will travel to Warsaw for discussions with his Polish counterpart Ewa Kopacz in Warsaw before concluding the trip in Berlin, where he will hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Prime Minister hopes to talk to all other 27 leaders of EU member states individually before the European Council summit at the end of next month.
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