Germany joined Britain yesterday in calling for European Union reforms that are fair to countries outside the eurozone, bolstering British Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to placate eurosceptics at home.

In a joint editorial in the Financial Times, British and German finance ministers George Osborne and Wolfgang Schaeuble said it was important that EU countries outside the eurozone – like Britain – are not disadvantaged by deeper integration of the currency union.

German support came as Cameron has been trying to satisfy powerful eurosceptic factions in his Conservative Party as well as voters defecting to the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP).

“Future EU reform and treaty change must include reform of the governance framework to put euro area integration on a sound legal basis, and guarantee fairness for those EU countries inside the single market but outside the single currency,” Osborne and Schaeuble wrote.

Cameron has promised to negotiate sweeping changes to the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU and, if re-elected next year, to hold a referendum by 2017 on whether Britain should stay in the 28-country bloc.