THE Prime Minister will discuss his plans for Europe's future with the Commission president Jacques Santer in London today.
The meeting will launch a series of bilateral contacts between Mr Blair and fellow EU leaders in the weeks ahead as the Prime Minister prepares for the European Summit in Cardiff in mid-June.
Mr Blair has already written to his fellow leaders suggesting that they should use part of their Cardiff meeting ''to have a first political discussion of the future direction and development of the European Union''.
In particular, he singled out ''the challenges we face, for example making a success of enlargement, the need to be in closer touch with and thus have the confidence of our people, and the political vision we need to achieve this''.
With few concrete decisions to be taken at next month's summit, the Government is hoping to use the final high profile event of its six-month EU presidency to stamp its mark on the issues such as fighting crime and improving the environment which it believes should feature high up the EU agenda as it enters the next century.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook delivered the same message to Euro MPs meeting in Brussels yesterday as he outlined the summit agenda. This will be heavily dominated by economic and employment concerns as EU leaders take stock of the efforts being made in every member state to create jobs and to ensure the successful launch of a single currency in January.
However, Mr Cook reminded his audience: ''If the summit is to be a success, it will only be so if the people watching what Government leaders do and decide see that it has relevance to their lives.''
One of the main challenges facing the union, he told MEPs, was how to construct an EU which would work efficiently even with up to 26 members.
''Sometime over the next 10 years we will see a Europe stretching from Portugal to Poland and from Scotland to Sicily. A Europe that is more than half as big again in land area and a third as much in population. It is a tremendous quantum leap for Europe,'' he warned.
Eye to the future Page 15
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