Letter: Wider, not closer European union

Sir: I warmly congratulate you on your leading article "The EU must now turn towards the east" (26 March) in which you rightly observe that "within our grasp we have the prospect of a free undivided democratic Europe". To many so-called Tory Euro-sceptics like myself the cause is precisely as you describe it - "the unification of Eastern and Western Europe in democracy and peace, the planting and nurturing of prosperity in the East".

This mission for the European Community is however incompatible with the Maastricht model of ever closer union via economic and monetary union and its costly centralising apparatus of a single protectionist European superstate.

JOHN WILKINSON MP

(Ruislip Northwood, Con)

House of Commons

London SW1