Europeans are increasingly divided over the proposed single currency, with the gap widening between Germans on the one hand and French, Italians and Spaniards on the other, a poll showed yesterday.
Two months before a special summit in Brussels on May 2nd to designate the countries qualifying to join the single currency, the three-monthly IPSOS/AFP survey indicated the widening of a breach already noted in 1997, with Latin countries favouring the euro but Germans opposed.
In Italy 72 per cent of people were found to support the euro, a one-point rise since December, along with 58 per cent in Spain, a four-point increase, and 56 per cent in France, up two points.
Germans voiced increasing hostility to the single currency. Only 34 per cent expressed a good opinion of the euro, a five-point fall, while 58 per cent (six percentage points more), were negative.
Britons, who are less involved given that their government has decided Britain will not be among the first countries to join the single currency, remain divided and indecisive, the survey by the polling institute and the news agency indicated.
There were slightly more opponents than supporters, 47 per cent against 44 per cent. This represented a change in the tendency since late 1997, when 43 per cent were against and 49 per cent in favour.
The poll also showed the end of the political honeymoon for Europe's two newest prime ministers, Mr Tony Blair and Mr Lionel Jospin. Mr Jospin fell five points to a 48 per cent approval rating, while Mr Blair shed 11 points to 50 per cent.
The poll was conducted by telephone between February 9th and 29th with interviewees aged over 18 in five samples.
Rachel Donnelly adds from London:
The Tories cannot hope to defeat Labour in any election unless the party's divisions over Europe are put to one side, a group of leading pro-European Tories said in London yesterday.
Launching a seminar to encourage national debate on Economic and Monetary Union, the former chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke, told the Positive Group of Conservative MPs that Britain had witnessed the Tories 'struggling with each other in an obsession about Europe' for far too long and had 'accentuated' the scale of defeat in the general election last May.
Insisting that the European debate would move on rapidly in the run-up to the launch of the single currency in 1999, Mr Clarke insisted a divided opposition would not win support for the party.
And in a reference to the party's position that Britain should not join the single currency in the next 10 years, Mr Clarke said: 'Whether you are a 'foreseeable future man', or a 'not for ten years man', I think both of these forms of words in two years will be not how they want to put it.'
Pointing to difficulties for the economy if a British government delayed entry to the single currency for too long, Mr Clarke said Britain could face problems negotiating an exchange rate for entry or a seat on the board of the European Central Bank.
Mr Clarke also had strong words for the former prime minister, Baroness Thatcher, when he rejected claims by the Eurosceptics that there was a constitutional bar to entering the single currency. Insisting that Lady Thatcher clearly understood the terms of the Single European Act, Mr Clarke said: 'I was in the cabinet at the time and she sure as hell did.'
Also on the platform with Mr Clarke, the former deputy prime minister, Mr Michael Heseltine, lent his support to the group. However, while Mr Heseltine and his colleagues were keen to discuss the merits of the single currency they remained silent when a member of the audience challenged their support of the euro.
The chairman of NatWest bank, Lord Weedon, told more than 200 supporters at the seminar, including the Tory MP Mr Iain Taylor, who resigned his shadow frontbench seat in protest over Mr Hague's European policy, that business leaders were increasingly supportive of the need to join the euro in the medium term.
The pressures of EMU and transparency in wages and prices across Europe would eventually lead Britain into the euro.