Blair 'haunted' on EU anniversary

Britain's legendary resistance to the European Union came back to haunt Tony Blair at the 50th anniversary celebration in Berlin.

The Prime Minister grinned wryly and other EU leaders applauded as German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled the UK's original reaction to plans for a common market.

British diplomat Russell Bretherton - dispatched as an observer to the 1955 Messina conference preparing the Treaty of Rome - told delegates of the six founding member states the project was doomed before it started. If the treaty was agreed it would not be ratified, and if ratified, it would have "no chance" of coming into force, opined Mr Bretherton.

On Sunday, exactly 50 years after the treaty which launched the modern EU came into force, the current crop of Europe's leaders basked in the Berlin sun and the reflected glory of half a century of unity.

Mrs Merkel, currently in the EU presidency, made clear the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the planned constitution will not stop the EU project.

"It is true that anyone who hoped that 50 years after the Treaties of Rome we would have a Constitutional Treaty will be disappointed," she said. But a newly-agreed "Berlin Declaration" would get the project back on track - because the political shape of Europe had to be constantly renewed.

Failure was not an option - and the example of Britain's attitude to the original treaty showed there was no need to talk about failure, she said.

Mrs Merkel then signed into being the Berlin Declaration, a new EU mission statement which says: "We are united in our aim of placing the EU on a renewed common basis before the European Parliament elections in 2009."

Without mentioning the constitution by name, the document amounts to a new timetable for agreeing sweeping reforms to give Europe a full-time EU president and "foreign minister", and whittle away the use of the national veto in EU decision-making. The moves are need to make the modern EU of 27 countries work efficiently, say EU leaders.

But Eurocentrics say EU expansion is being used to push for nothing short of full integration despite growing public disquiet about the scale of the project.