LONDON: The British prime minister, David Cameron, was put on notice on Thursday that no other EU leader is likely to support his campaign to rewrite the terms of British membership of the union and then put the outcome to a referendum.

As Britain faces a fresh EU battle over a proposal to cap bankers’ bonuses, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, attacked the way the prime minister was waging his campaign for a “new settlement” in Britain’s 40 year membership of the EU.

The president said he presumed leaders of other EU countries “neither particularly like... nor particularly fear” Cameron’s plans to demand the repatriation of powers during a future revision of the Lisbon treaty.

“How do you convince a room full of people, when you keep your hand on the door handle? How to encourage a friend to change, if your eyes are searching for your coat?” he asked at a Policy Network conference in London.

The intervention by Van Rompuy, who chairs and organises the regular EU summits, came as the prime minister served notice that Britain would challenge an EU agreement to slash bankers’ bonuses at a meeting of European finance ministers next week.

Amid fears that the EU agreement could deal a hammer blow to the City of London, Cameron said EU regulations needed to be flexible enough to allow international banks to operate in Britain and the rest of the EU.

The prime minister said at a meeting of Nordic leaders in the Latvian capital of Riga: “We need to make sure that regulation put in place in Brussels is flexible enough to allow (international) banks (in London) to continue competing and succeeding while being located in the UK.”

Britain will need to win allies to amend, or reject, the plans hammered out in Brussels on Wednesday night between officials from the EU’s 27 member states, MEPs and the European commission. They are decided by qualified majority voting, which means that no member state has a national veto.

But there were signs that the UK is in danger of alienating one of its closest allies when the Netherlands questioned Cameron’s plan to use a future treaty change, which may be held to underpin the euro, as a way of repatriating powers. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, told the Policy Network, “We will do everything to avoid treaty change if we can fix it (the eurozone) within the existing treaties. I believe this is the common opinion in almost all member states.

“This is going to be an interesting case for the British government. If they still want a referendum one would ask: a referendum on what if you don’t have a treaty change?”

In the first set-piece response from a European leader to Cameron’s speech, Van Rompuy endorsed the Dutch view that there is scant appetite for renegotiating the Lisbon treaty.

“Changing the EU treaties is not the priority,” he said. “The work ahead is crucial, but I see no impending need to open the EU treaties for it. Nor do I feel much appetite for it around the leaders’ table.”

The president warned that UK government policy on Europe was not just a matter to be sorted out between London and Brussels. It had to be agreed with 26 other governments and those governments were already adjusting their policies and decision-taking because of the Cameron campaign.

In remarks not voiced in public since Cameron made his much-delayed referendum speech last month, and delivered in London to boot, the former Belgian prime minister said, “The wish to redefine your country’s relationship with the union has not gone unnoticed. I cannot speak on behalf of the other presidents and prime ministers, but I presume they neither particularly like it, nor particularly fear it.”

Arguing that Britain had much to gain by remaining a central player in the EU, and that pooling sovereignty with Germany, France and the other 25 member states actually magnified UK clout, Van Rompuy called on Cameron to play a more assertive and positive role in pressing its liberal, free-trade agenda.

Olli Rehn, the influential commissioner for monetary affairs, echoed Van Rompuy’s call for Britain to play a more central role, warning that it “should not seek to undo our community. This is a game in which, if I were a British citizen, I would want my country to be playing as a midfield playmaker rather than watching from the sidelines. No one ever scored goals sitting on the bench.”

Van Rompuy warned that Britain was free to exit the EU, but that the exit “doesn’t come for free. It would be legally and politically a most complicated and unpractical affair. Just think of a divorce after 40 years of marriage.”

By arrangement with the Guardian