BRUSSELS — A month after setting Britain at odds with Europe, David Cameron walked a tightrope at a summit on Monday between appeasing angry leaders on the continent and upsetting his party at home.
The British prime minister cut a more subdued figure in Brussels than he did in December, when he kept London out of a new fiscal discipline pact that the other 26 members of the European Union are set to sign.
He received a warm greeting from Angela Merkel, with the German chancellor and the British leader exchanging kisses on the cheek, and he shook hands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Shortly before Cameron arrived, Britain appeared to back down on a threat to veto the use of EU institutions by the rest of the bloc to discuss the fiscal pact.
That could win back lost friends in Europe -- but it has already shown signs of alienating the so-called "Eurosceptic" wing of his centre-right Conservative party.
Cameron kept his rhetoric tough as he went into the colossal European Council building, riffing on his favourite themes of the importance of the single market and the need for deregulation.
"This is a European Council where we need to get really serious about the growth agenda in Europe," he said as he stepped out of a German-built Mercedes. "That's the agenda that I'm going to be pushing and I hope to find a lot of support."
Support may be lacklustre after Cameron launched a stinging attack on his European partners at the the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, slamming the eurozone as uncompetitive and branding as "madness" a planned transaction tax.
But Britain was taking far more of a back-seat role in Monday's discussions.
A British official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said London was now not seeking "observer status" at separate talks on the fiscal pact, despite insisting on them before.
"We are involved in the discussions but they are talking about fiscal rules with sanctions for countries that have the eurozone as their currency," the official said. "We are not asking for observer status. Some (non-euro) countries who are signing this treaty are seeking it."
Poland and the Czech Republic, neither of which use the euro, expressed doubts about the pact on Monday, with Polish premier Donald Tusk warning he would not sign unless it is altered to give Warsaw a say in key eurozone decision-making.
Meanwhile, the British official said Cameron would echo Foreign Secretary William Hague's comments a few hours earlier, when Hague dropped the threat of a veto on the use of EU institutions.
Hague said Britain had "real legal concerns" about the use of the European Court of Justice under the new agreement, but said it would "reserve" its position for now.
British officials said their understanding was the "fiscal compact" to be signed by the rest of the EU was fairly narrow and was unlikely to affect issues such as the single market, regarded as crucial by London.
But Cameron's balancing act threatens to come unstuck in Britain.
His self-proclaimed use of Britain's "veto" in December to stay out of the fiscal pact delighted the anti-European wing of his party, which he needs to keep the Conservatives at the head of a coalition government.
They now fear he is backing down.
Iain Duncan Smith, a senior cabinet minister and former leader of the Conservative party known as a strong "Eurosceptic", issued a veiled threat at the weekend when he said he trusted Cameron to uphold his veto pledge.
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