Brown unveils new studies on euro entry

The Chancellor said yesterday the Government would carry out an additional four studies to feed into its assessment of the economic case for adopting the euro.

The move could be seized on by the anti-euro camp as erecting new hurdles to joining the single currency but Treasury officials insisted that the Gordon Brown's announcement did not alter the Government's approach or the five economic tests it set back in 1997.

The new studies will look at exchange rate and macroeconomic adjustment, at the transition to the euro and at the overall framework for the existing five economic tests.

The fourth study will bring together specially commissioned papers by international academics on aspects of British membership of the euro, the Chancellor told Parliament yesterday.

The studies will complement the five tests that the Government has committed to passing judgement on by June. The Government has said it will offer the public a referendum on euro entry if the five tests prove it makes economic sense for Britain to scrap the pound.

The studies will feed into the existing five tests and are not designed to set new parameters for the possible adoption of the euro, the Treasury said.

Mr Brown also said a progress report on European economic reform would be published on Monday.