Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, yesterday predicted that Europe would become a federation of nation states once the EU had expanded to 27 members in 2004.

The Green party politician said this would happen "certainly, not without crises or problems, but the pressure is in that direction".

Fischer used a Tony Blair speech in Warsaw in November, when the PM called for a new restructured European parliament, as support for his cause. Mr Fischer said of Blair: "For a British prime minister he made the most important speech since Churchill's landmark speech on Europe" in Zurich in 1946. The wartime leader then called for a united states of Europe.