"Blair Urges Embrace of Europe, Blasts Failures of Past UK Policies
BIRMINGHAM, England -- In a speech ripe with potential site selection ramifications, British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently urged his nation to substantially strengthen its connection with Europe. Many observers, in fact, interpreted Blair's strongly worded remarks as the opening salvo in a campaign for UK membership in the European Monetary Union (EMU). "We vacated a decisive role in shaping the single currency, its timing, the Maastricht convergence criteria and the European Central Bank," Blair (pictured above) said in his speech to the European Research Institute in Birmingham. Britain has a "history of missed opportunities" in Europe, Blair asserted in a speech to the European Research Institute in Birmingham. One of those missed opportunities, he asserted, was the nation's failure to participate in shaping the European Union's monetary policy. "We will not have influence if we only ever see Europe as in opposition to Britain," he said. "The UK, Denmark and Sweden are the only three of the EU's 15 member nations that have chosen to remain outside the EMU. A strategy of locating within "the euro zone" has driven a number of corporate site selections. The most high profile of those moves was Toyota's 1997 decision to site a US$1.6 billion European auto production facility in EMU member France rather than in the UK. "Compromises are usually easier than bold gestures," he said in Birmingham. "And yet without imagining the future and preparing for it, today's leaders quickly become yesterday's men, clutching at irrelevant assumptions and forgotten shibboleths."
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