David Cameron has rebuffed criticism at home and abroad of his commitment to hold a referendum on the UK's future in Europe if he wins the next election.
'Wriggle room'
Labour and the Lib Dems have said plans to renegotiate the UK's membership and put it to a public vote is a gamble and against the national interest.
France and Germany have warned the UK against "cherry-picking" powers and pursuing an "a la carte" approach.
But the prime minister said he believed his stance was backed by the public.
Mr Cameron's promise to give the British people "their say" on Europe - in the form of an in/out referendum to be held before 2018 - has been welcomed by most Conservative MPs and eurosceptics in other parties.
At the next election - expected in 2015 - the Conservative leader said his party would offer people a "simple choice" between staying in the EU under new terms, or leaving the 27-member union altogether.
'Destiny'
He said the issue of the UK's future in Europe would not "go away" and now was the right time to confront it when the EU was set to go through a period of profound change amid calls for further integration.
In a long-awaited speech, Mr Cameron said the referendum would be a decision on the UK's "destiny" and, if he secured a new relationship he was happy with, he would campaign "heart and soul" to stay within the EU.
While he believed the UK could survive outside the EU, he said withdrawal would be a "one-way ticket" and he appealed for "cool heads" in the debate to come.
The prime minister rejected suggestions that a new relationship was "impossible to achieve" and dismissed calls for the referendum to be held sooner, saying such a "momentous decision" must wait until the UK's relationship with the EU "had been put right".
However, Mr Cameron did not spell out what powers he would like to see the UK take back as part of a new settlement or what would happen if the negotiations did not go his way.
The Conservative leader has been under pressure from many of his MPs to give a binding commitment to a vote on Europe.
But Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC that Mr Cameron's message was not "confined or directed" to his backbenchers or those voters attracted by the UK Independence Party's call for EU withdrawal and should resonate across Europe
"It is not the Conservative Party he is speaking to. It is the British public and the European public."
Conservative MPs who want a looser relationship with the EU welcomed Mr Cameron's promise and one, Mark Reckless, suggested Mr Cameron had left his own position in a referendum "up for grabs" and had the "wriggle room" to campaign for an exit if he believed this was the only option left for Britain.
But Labour said Mr Cameron was "going to put Britain through years of uncertainty, and take a huge gamble with our economy" while opposition leader Ed Miliband said that he opposed the idea of an in/out referendum.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who is also deputy prime minister, said "years of uncertainty" caused by a future referendum would hit jobs and growth and this "was not in the national interest".
The UK Independence Party said the "genie was out of the bottle" about a possible exit from the EU. "Winning this referendum, if and when it comes, is not going to be an easy thing but I feel that UKIP's real job starts today," the party's leader Nigel Farage said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would listen to British "wishes" but her foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said "cherry picking is not an option" before adding that Europe needed more, not less, integration.
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius warned: "You can't do Europe a la carte... to take an example which our British friends will understand - imagine Europe is a football club and you join, once you're in it you can't say 'Let's play rugby'".
Source : BBC
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