Ian Black: Inside Europe

Excitement over Sweden's announcement of a date with its euro destiny comes just when everyone thought that Ireland's second-time-lucky referendum on the Nice treaty had sated appetites for popular consultation on European questions. Goran Persson's potentially risky referendum on the single currency next September will be the first since those plucky little Danes next door delighted sceptics by saying nej to the euro two years' ago.

But the Swedish prime minister is not alone. In the course of 2003 there will also be referendums in nine of the 10 candidate countries being invited to join the club at next week's Copenhagen summit. Hungary, the keenest of the new intake, is likely to start the ball rolling in the summer. The neatest idea so far is for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to endorse their European choice simultaneously on August 23, the anniversary of the notorious Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, which carved up the Baltic republics and Poland between Stalin and Hitler.

And there may be surprises. Malta, having negotiated hard with Brussels to keep its right to hunt small birds protected elsewhere in the union, could well say no to membership, though it's so tiny no one may notice. Then there will be referendums in France, Ireland (again) and elsewhere on ratifying the next EU treaty, the one rewriting the rules for a club of up to 28 (that's including Turkey) for quite a few years to come. Even Greenland, the only territory ever to leave the union, is considering a new referendum on joining (something to do with dwindling cod stocks).

Will Persson's decision affect Tony Blair's euro calculations? Probably not. On the positive side, as Roman Prodi smartly observed, Sweden's move does suggest the eurozone is a place people want to be, despite the deepening economic gloom. And the commission is trying to make it more appealing with proposals to reform the stability and growth pact - the "stupidity pact", Prodi called it recently. The idea is that countries with sound finances can worry less about a balanced budget, allowing more investment in infrastructure and public services, though their deficit still has to stay at no more than 3% of total output.

The initiative, as so often, was over-hyped, but it is one way to rebut the claim that "Brussels" can order Gordon Brown to cut spending on schools and hospitals, or firefighters' pay. It doesn't address arguments about one-size-fits-all interest rates or fixed exchange rates, but may - one day - make it easier to convince europhile doubters to scrap the pound.

It is too early to predict the outcome in Sweden, but a "yes" (my guess) would leave Britain, with only Denmark for company, looking even lonelier outside the eurozone as the 10 newcomers - who do not have the luxury of opt-outs from the Maastricht treaty - prepare to enter from about 2006.

Unsurprisingly, there was very little about the euro in Blair's big but underreported EU speech in Cardiff the other day, though it did include a telling line about the dangers of forever "hanging back". It was mainly intended for diplomats and members of Valery Giscard d'Estaing's convention on the future of Europe.

The point was to accentuate the positive - UK readiness for more majority voting, the wish for a more coherent global role for the EU, the need for a strong commission - while laying down red lines as France and Germany, trying hard to cooperate in key policy areas, ratchet up their involvement.

It was important stuff, and well put. But it somehow again underlined that plaintively familiar adage: Blair may well have brought Britain closer to the heart of Europe but he has not yet succeeded in bringing Europe to the heart of Britain.