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European Council

My Lords, on all proposals emanating from the Commission on financial services, we will vigorously defend British interests. We will continue to do so. Indeed, we believe that we have protected our interests in being able to do so by not signing up to the treaty. On the second question, I hope that I have dealt with EU institutions. We do not rule out the use of the institutions outside the treaty. After all, we have agreed to that before, along with all the member states, for the EFSF treaty where we thought that made sense. There are other intergovernmental treaties that became part of the umbrella of EU treaties, such as on Schengen where we have an opt-out. So it is too early to give a specific answer to the noble Lord but he will understand that in our vision of a flexible Europe there should be enough room to have different treaties at different times to deal with different issues.