They want a standard set of duties and powers to be set out for the public sector - with the money following those who demonstrate a capacity for integration and ending duplication.
In other words, a rate of immigration that outruns the capacity for cultural integration threatens the distinctive national institutions that ensure freedom and prosperity.
The rescue of the eurozone is a political and economic challenge of a magnitude that the EU has not faced since its creation in the 1950s and neither Merkel nor Hollande look to be leaders who have the capacity for the bold leadership on European integration that their predecessors demonstrated across successive decades.