David Cameron has succeeded in renegotiating the terms of Britain's European Union membership, paving the way for a cabinet meeting on Saturday that will allow him to announce a referendum on 23 June, The Guardian reported.
A marathon round of talks over two days, during which the prime minister managed just three hours sleep in the early hours of Friday morning, led to an agreement for the UK shortly after 9pm UK time.
The prime minister tweeted that he had successfully negotiated a deal on Friday night.
But the deal was in danger of being overshadowed as Downing Street braced itself for an expected announcement by Michael Gove that he will campaign for Britain to leave the EU. The justice secretary, a longstanding Eurosceptic, has been agonising for months about whether to follow his conscience or support his friends and allies, Cameron and George Osborne, in favour of EU membership.
The prime minister, who will be nervous that Gove's expected decision will embolden other ministers and Boris Johnson to follow his lead, is likely to claim that he has strengthened his key demands since the European council president Donald Tusk outlined his draft agreement on 2 February. The key changes will mean that:
A proposed emergency brake on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits will last for seven years. It will apply on an individual basis for no more than four years, and will be phased out after the first year. But the UK will be allowed to apply the overall restrictions for seven years.
Restrictions on child benefit for EU migrants will kick in at a reduced rate - indexed to the rate of a migrant's home country - for new migrants with immediate effect. Existing EU migrants will be paid at the lower rate from 2020. Eastern European countries had hoped to exempt existing migrants altogether.
Britain has a specific opt out from the EU's historic commitment to forge an ever closer union of the peoples of Europe.
One country - effectively Britain - will have the right to impose a handbrake to refer contentious financial regulation to a meeting of EU leaders in the European council.
The prime minister will now be thrown into the most perilous phase of his premiership, even though he will claim he has strengthened the draft deal for Britain that was seen even by some pro-Europeans as underwhelming.
