Patten attacks Blair over plans for powerful EU president

The European commissioner Chris Patten has launched the sharpest attack yet on Tony Blair's plan for the creation of a hugely powerful EU president.

In an interview with The Independent Mr Patten argues that divisions in the EU over Iraq have underlined the impossibility of a single senior politician speaking for Europe in the US and elsewhere.

He also suggests that Mr Blair should make public more of his disagreements with the US and begin a "more vigorous" debate in favour of British entry to the single currency.

Mr Patten, a Blair appointee and the External Affairs commissioner, says: "I wonder whe-ther some of those who advocate a full-time president of the European Council would have been happy over the last three or four weeks if they had opened The Independent or El Pais or Le Monde and seen the news that a former European prime minister, the new president of the council, was in Washington telling President Bush what the whole of Europe thought."

Though strongly backed by France, Spain and Italy, and broadly accepted by Germany, the plan for a powerful new "Mr Europe" is fiercely opposed by smaller EU countries who see it as a means of concentrating power in the hands of the big member states.

Britain's advocacy of the proposal has fuelled speculation that Mr Blair could be a candidate for the job after the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference on the EU's future.