Cameron vetoes EU treaty change

BRUSSELS, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron was cheered and jeered for rejecting a European Union treaty change because London's economic safety could not be assured.

London Mayor Boris Johnson said Cameron "played a blinder," a sports term for performing skillfully, by standing up for London in his refusal to sign off on the changes, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

Conservative Party member Mark Reckless called the development "very significant while former Foreign Secretary David Owen accused Cameron of leaving Britain "in a mess."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Cameron made "unacceptable" demands for exemptions from some financial regulations in return for joining in the "fiscal compact" what would be memorialized in the treaty change.

Twenty-three members of the European Union's 27 members agreed to a fiscal compact meant to create fiscal stability in the eurozone. All 17 members who use the euro plus six other countries that may use the currency in the future.

"The prime minister has been as good as his word. He said he would not agree to a new treaty unless he was able to safeguard the interests of the city [of London]," Reckless told the BBC. "The other EU countries would not agree to safeguard the interests of the city and therefore David Cameron has said no. … All of us will need time to see how the institutions of Europe are going to move forward."

Owen warned that Britain is "in danger of literally being on our own."

"This is the first time that a British government has failed to achieve British objectives, which is to remain fundamentally within the European structures, and have to walk away from that so we are in danger of literally being on our own," Owen said.

Because not all of the bloc's members backed the change, EU officials said they expected to work out a deal to tighten national fiscal policy rules among the 23 members who voted for the change.

Britain and Hungary, which also refused to go along with the EU treaty change, won't participate while Sweden and the Czech Republic reserved their positions, officials said.

Sarkozy said the new accord would likely be ready by March 2012.

The EU leaders agreed to provide as much as $267 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help it stand behind the eurozone, Van Rompuy said.

Asian stock indexes tumbled Friday on the news.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index fell about 1.5 percent. Seoul's Korea Composite Stock Price Index lost about 1.8 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index shed 2.5 percent.