Britain & the new European agenda

The European Union is changing. Faster than many in Britain imagine. In the next 12 months, the EU faces a series of interlocking decisions which are likely to define the future of the continent for the next generation. The planned launch of the single European currency on 1 January 1999 will mark the most far-reaching change in the international monetary order since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Enlargement of the EU to the former communist countries of central and eastern Europe will complete an historical cycle which began with the division of the continent at Yalta in 1945.
Lionel Barber has been Brussels correspondent of the Financial Times since 1992.