Britain Under Blair Warms to European Unity

European Union leaders, long accustomed to British skepticism about a united Europe, came to London with nagging questions Friday but went home smiling.

After a week in office, Prime Minister Tony Blair is moving quickly--but cautiously--to smooth ruffled feathers among continental partners who admire his winning political flair but wonder how deep his commitment runs to their dream of a united Europe.

Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok and his foreign minister, Hans van Mierlo, who will host a key EU summit in Amsterdam next month, met here with Blair and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in talks that seemed to satisfy everybody without immediately solving major differences.

Kok hailed Blair’s decision to sign the long-pending European Social Chapter, reversing the refusal of John Major’s predecessor Conservative government.

“It is an enormous step forward,” Kok said. But, he added, “the rest has to follow.”

Cook called Friday’s meeting “very successful and very positive,” saying he believed that broad agreements will be possible at the Amsterdam summit to update documents in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty, which commits EU member states to political and economic union by the end of the decade.

“It will be our intention to come to Amsterdam to reach an agreement, providing that we are satisfied that Britain’s national interests have been served,” Cook said. “But we have always made it plain that we will be retaining the veto both in the foreign and security area and also the justice and home affairs pillar.”

Translation: Britain won’t agree to EU responsibility for Europe-wide justice, asylum and immigration, foreign affairs or defense.

In a country that still believes that cooperation in Europe must not include any surrender of sovereignty, Blair is also cold to any extension of powers for the European Commission or the European Court of Justice.

But in another gesture of peace, Britain is now prepared to give freer rein to the European Parliament, Minister for Europe Douglas Henderson said in Brussels this week on his first official visit to the home of the EU’s bureaucracy.

From Bordeaux to Berlin, virtually all of Europe’s mainstream leftist parties--and even some on the center-right--see Blair’s landslide victory as a good omen for European integration.

Many leaders will be facing voters soon, and they all want a piece of Blair, a fresh personality who has quickly come to incarnate hopes for change despite--or maybe because of--the fact that he made few specific campaign promises.

In Germany, where national elections are scheduled for October 1998, both Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats have claimed Blair’s win as their own.

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In France, where upcoming legislative elections will pit the right-wing coalition of Prime Minister Alain Juppe against the main opposition of Socialists and Communists, both sides quickly claimed to be fighting the same fight as Blair.

In Brussels, the passing of Major’s Tories--the EU’s most persistent in-house critics since the days of Margaret Thatcher--was unmourned, even if Blair’s Labor Party has made clear that it intends to continue many Conservative policies.

“We expect the United Kingdom, under your government, to play a leading role in the union and in Europe,” EU Commission President Jacques Santer said in a message of congratulations to Blair last week. “More than ever, the EU needs strong British engagement.”

Cook called for “constructive engagement” with Europe. Still, many remain unconvinced.

“England will perhaps no longer hold an official anti-European discourse, as has been the case for years, but no one should expect a sudden conversion,” cautioned commentator Julien Redon in France’s largest daily newspaper, Ouest-France.

The initial British message from Henderson, who has scant expertise in the intricacies of the new Europe, was mixed.

He announced Blair’s consent for social laws that Major had dismissed as harmful to employment, but he also voiced reservations about further European integration.

This week, Blair granted the Bank of England authority to, for the first time, set interest rates without government intervention, bringing Britain’s central bank closer to its European counterparts. But on the issue of a common European currency, Blair seems scarcely more receptive than the skeptical Major.

Montalbano reported from London and Dahlburg from Paris.