Clarke: Single currency "less likely to succeed"

Clarke Hardens EMU Stance

The pro-Europe Tory leadership challenger said Britain now had two choices: to wait for the right economic conditions for the introduction of the Euro, or to enter a weak currency.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme he said, "We can say look, it isn't happening on the right basis, so let's put it off. Let's try to get economic conditions right across Europe. I think that would be a good thing to do."

"The Euro would have considerable advantages if it was a strong currency, and the countries which went into it had strong economies. That has been somewhat threatened by events in the last two or three weeks," he said.

The Bundesbank's decision to challenge the German government over its efforts to meet the strict Maastricht criteria should send a warning to the European Commission, he said.

And Mr Clarke pointed to the election of a left-wing government in France as further evidence that the single currency project should be put on ice.

He said the French had made the decision that they "don't want to have any more economic change".

"I think that makes any sensible single currency much less likely to take place in the next year or two," he added.

The former chancellor said the alternative would be to press ahead with looser criteria.

"That would be very bad indeed," he said. "Which is why I strongly argue for delay."

But Mr Clarke refused to commit himself to when monetary union should take place. "I always think a timetable is artificial. It is however long it takes for the French and the Germans and the other principal governments of western Europe to get hold of their economies and make themselves more like the British was in the early 1990s."

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