Chair of European Parliament’s powerful ECON Committee hits out at Tory Eurosceptics attempting to undermine UK’s position in EU

The British Chair of the European Parliament's powerful Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Sharon Bowles MEP, has hit out at reports today that a group of Conservative MPs will attempt to use the financial crisis in the Eurozone as an opportunity to renegotiate the UK's position in the EU. She says damage is done by such talk and neither would it work.

Speaking on the Today Programme this morning, Conservative MP George Eustice said the group of approximately 80 Conservative MPs plans to meet next week to discuss how this can be achieved.

In response, Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles said:

"This latest bout of Euroscepticism by Tory backbenchers will do yet more damage to the UK's reputation in Brussels and the notion that the UK should be using the financial crisis in the Eurozone to renegotiate its role in the EU is incredibly damaging to our ability to negotiate at all levels.

"The Eurozone debt crisis does affect theUK- we see this already on our stock market - and our energy should go into helping to resolve this issue, not trying to hold other Member States hostage.

"Just because we do not have the Euro it does not mean that UK banks do not have huge exposures to the debt of other European nations. For example, the UK has some 2 trillion Euro exposure to France, so what hurts them hurts us."

ENDS

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