A British official on Sunday dismissed a report that Prime Minister David Cameron had threatened at an EU summit last week to bring forward a referendum on British membership of the EU if Jean-Claude Juncker became European Commission president.
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Cameron had said he would not be able to ensure that Britain stayed in the European Union if Juncker got the job.
It said participants understood this to mean that a vote for Juncker could destabilize Cameron's government to the extent that the referendum would have to be brought forward from its planned date of 2017, and that this would make it likely that the British people would vote to leave the EU.