Lib Dems call on Brown to re-launch single currency debate

4.00.00pm GMT Tue 18th Nov 2008

In a speech in the European Parliament today regarding the outcome of the g-20 summit, Andrew Duff MEP, Leader of the Liberal Democrat European Parliamentary Party, said:

"The financial crisis will have a dramatic effect on the eurozone. Denmark and Sweden should join sooner than anyone expected. But in the UK, too, it is high time that the debate on the single currency is revived.

"In 1997 Mr Brown set five so-called economic tests to judge sterling's accession to the eurozone. Suddenly, all these criteria are met. The pound has fallen to a competitive exchange rate level. The City risks being pushed aside as supervision and regulation is strengthened inside the eurozone. And the economic cycles of Britain and the eurozone are now completely in sync as they both plunge into recession together.

"Mr Brown's cleverly disguised appearance at the eurogroup summit in Paris was a notable achievement of the French presidency. But unless he now changes the terms of the British debate about EMU, the pound will be the ping pong ball bouncing beyond control between the giant footballs of the dollar and the euro."

ENDS