June 25, 2015 12:02 am

David Cameron hopes to “kick off” his renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership with a low-key presentation at a Brussels summit dinner on Thursday.

But Berlin has warned the UK prime minister about his plans to curb welfare benefits for migrant workers.

The UK prime minister will set out his broad objectives for a new British deal but other European leaders did not expect a big debate or extensive summit conclusions. One senior EU diplomat said the discussion would be “cursory”.

Mr Cameron hopes the details of his plan to make Europe more competitive, open and decentralised can be hammered out by EU and British officials behind closed doors in Brussels, with final proposals agreed by December.

While EU leaders are unlikely to give a special mandate to oversee the talks, Donald Tusk, the European Council president, is expected to take a lead role.

“This is a job for leaders not for senior eurocrats,” said one high-ranking EU diplomat.

In a sign of the Brussels machinery preparing for a complex package of measures, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, also established a special task force on British renegotiation, led by a veteran British eurocrat Jonathan Faull.

The move was welcomed by Downing Street, which described Mr Faull as a “British official with a very strong reputation in Brussels”.

He was previously responsible for overseeing EU financial regulation issued after the 2008 financial crisis, serving a French EU commissioner Michel Barnier who was often sharply at odds with London.

Mr Cameron met Angela Merkel, German chancellor, on Wednesday evening before a state banquet in Berlin attended by the Queen, in a renewed attempt to win the backing of Europe’s most powerful leader.

In her state banquet speech on Wednesday evening, the Queen avoided any reference to the EU, or Britain’s possible exit from the bloc, but did say: “We know that division in Europe is dangerous and that we must guard against it in the West as well as the East.”

She also spoke about the decades of co-operation between Britain and Germany since 1945 — and expressed confidence that it would continue in the future.

Ms Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert, said the chancellor wanted Britain “as a part of the European Union” but stressed that Mr Cameron’s negotiations would involve all member states, not just Germany.

He added that the UK premier’s plan for a four-year qualification period for benefits for migrant workers could not breach the EU’s principles of “free movement and non-discrimination”, although there were issues that could be discussed around welfare.

Mr Cameron’s team are stressing that he will have raised his main points in person with most of the 28 leaders before the summit. The British prime minister has refused to set out a precise list of demands, fearing that it could be used as a yardstick of his negotiating success.

Eurosceptic Tory MPs are growing frustrated by the opacity of Mr Cameron’s approach and are insisting that the prime minister sets out exactly what he wants before the party’s annual conference in October.

Speaking ahead of the Brussels summit, Mr Cameron said the meeting “presents an opportunity to get the negotiation under way and to kick off a process to work through the substance and to find solutions”.

The UK prime minister wants to put his final settlement to the British people in a referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017, with a possibility that the vote will happen next year.

While Mr Cameron has kept his options open on timing for the referendum, behind the scenes he has pushed for a deal between EU leaders this year.