European Parliament

Sinn Fein's Martina Anderson says the UK's renegotiation is only further evidence of the "right-wing agenda" dominant in the EU institutions. 

She adds that EU leaders are currently engaged in a "race to the bottom" to "disregard human rights and equality". 

She also says she regrets that there is "not a mention" in the draft agreement of the possible impact of a Brexit on Ireland, and in particular for the Good Friday Agreement. 

European Parliament

French Front National leader Marine le Pen says that the renegotiations have been a "masquerade", that the British public will not be "taken in" by. 

She adds that the European Union is in any case likely to "collapse under the weight of its own contradictions".

She says that the bloc can only "cobble together" solutions to political problems based on "blackmail and threats". 

BBC 5Live

Former Home Office minister Damian Green, a member of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign that wants the UK to stay in the EU, says the deal is a significant achievement for David Cameron:

Green MEP Molly Scott Cato dismissed Mr Farage's "behaviour" as distinctly "un-British".

But Mr Farage retorted: "I'm big enough and ugly enough to take it."

European Parliament

UKIP leader Nigel Farage says that yesterday's package of measures was "hardly worth the wait" and "really rather pathetic". 

He adds that the new deal has "no treaty change, no powers returned, and no control of our borders". 

He says he finds it "humiliating" to see a British prime minister journey to Brussels, like Dickens character Oliver Twist, asking fellow EU leaders for "some more". 

However, he says he is "certain" that Mr Cameron "won't get another thing" on top of what has been offered. 

He tells MEPs that, given what he initially aimed to achieve, the prime minister's "emergency brake" on welfare benefits is "more of a handbrake turn". 

He predicts that "people power" will result in a vote to leave the EU. 

European Parliament

Left-wing GUE group leader and German MEP Gabriele Zimmer says that the EU will "lose credibility" unless it seeks to involve the European Parliament more in any similar renegotiations in the future. 

She adds that the package of measures will "bury" the concept of social union in the EU - and says the deal "bends the knee to the City of London". 

Another German, Rebecca Harms - a co-leader of the Green/EFA group - says British voters should also remember that the result of the vote will matter "for millions of citizens across the European Union". 

UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the European Parliament that the proposed "emergency brake" on EU migrants in the UK-EU draft deal was more like "a handbrake turn".

BBC 5Live

Labour ex-minister Kate Hoey, a member of the Vote Leave campaign, said of the proposed EU deal: 

Image source, AFP/Getty

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says the EU package sufficiently addresses Britain's concerns about an "ever closer union".

He told the European Parliament the paper made clear there were different levels of European integration.

European Parliament

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who leads the Liberal ALDE group, repeats his call for migration measures to take priority at this month's EU summit. 

He adds that finding solutions to Europe's migration crisis as soon as possible is "far more important" than finding a final deal with the UK this month. 

He says that the EU would be a "dwarf" without the UK - and that it would not be able to act as a counterweight to China, Russia and the United States. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin would "win" as a result of a Brexit, he adds, because he "likes a divided Europe". 

BBC 5Live

Former Europe minister David Heathcote-Amory, a Eurosceptic, said the draft EU settlement does not go far enough

"We do not control our borders," he told BBC 5Live.

"Now all David Cameron has done is to try and tinker with the benefits system to try and reduce the magnetic pole in some respects of British benefits."

The draft package includes:  

• a “safeguard mechanism” to curb in-work benefits for EU migrants for four years, if other countries agree
• the change would be achieved through revising a 2011 EU regulation, meaning other countries might be able to use it in the future too
• however, in-work benefits would be gradually restored for the longer a citizen of another EU country stays in the UK
• EU migrants will continue to be able to send child benefit back home, but would get a lower level if the cost of living in the country where the child is is lower 

Image source, PA

European Parliament

British Conservative Syed Kammall, who leads the ECR group, calls for a "full, frank and honest debate" about the UK's role in the EU. 

He says that Britain has always had an "ambiguous relationship" with the EU, because of a "massive gap" in perceptions between those in the EU institutions and the British public. 

He adds that "politicians from all parties" have historically "played down" the political dimension of EU membership, whereas many people who voted to remain in the EEC thought they were voting for a relationship based mainly on trade. 

European Parliament

German Christian democrat MEP Manfred Weber, who leads the centre-right EPP group, says that he hopes the changes will allow UK voters to decide that it is "better to stay in the family". 

The leader of the Socialist and Democrat group, Italian MEP Gianni Pitella, says that it is "crucial" that the UK stays in the EU, and that he hopes Mr Tusk's letter yesterday can help to "clarify the UK's role" in the bloc. 

He adds that his group, however, will seek clarification on changes that may affect workers' rights, a topic about which they are "very concerned".   

BBC 5Live

The chairman of the influential 1922 Committee representing backbench Tory MPs, Graham Brady says the EU proposals are "a mess".

"I don't want to be churlish because I think David Cameron has clearly achieved some important improvements - but not on a scale that begins to address the concerns that I have," he told BBC 5 Live.

"What I would like to see is a completely different, a fundamentally changed relationship - one which can't continue to pull the United Kingdom to places that it doesn't wish to go." 

BBC Newsnight

Europe Minister David Lidington said he believed a key element of the EU package - changes to the benefits rules for migrants - would be effective.  

"I'm very confident that if a deal of this kind goes through, and I repeat again, a lot of the detail has yet to be negotiated, then the incentives that our welfare system provides will be reduced and therefore people have less incentive to come to the UK," he told BBC's Newsnight.

European Parliament

Continuing on the subject of the UK referendum, President Juncker says that negotiations relating to migration and free movement were the "most difficult" in the talks so far. 

He says the proposed brake on migrant benefits has been "tailor made" to address the UK's concerns.

He adds that this new tool should allow the UK to deal with "record number of mobile EU citizens" that have come to Britain.

He adds, however, that the high immigration level into the UK is also a "consequence" of the UK's decision not to "phase in free movement" for new EU member states in 2004. 

BBC Breakfast

Former defence secretary Liam Fox, who says he will vote for the UK to leave the EU, is sceptical about the draft deal.

"I don't believe that we have control over making our own laws, control over our own borders, control over our own economy," he told the BBC.

"I don't believe that anything we saw yesterday would change that - in fact, if you look at some of the elements of the package on migrants benefits, it's well short of what the British government was demanding, in terms of our abilities to repatriate laws, we've got not at all."