Michael Howard will today venture into dangerous territory by setting out his vision for Europe.

The Conservative leader will risk the wrath of his eurosceptic backbenchers by calling for "A New Deal for Europe".

His predecessors Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague avoided policy debates on Europe to avert widening splits within Conservative ranks over issues such as the single currency.

However Howard will tell the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Berlin this evening that he will campaign for a smaller EU government machine.

Big state

He is likely to return to one of his core themes that the big state interferes too much in people's lives and that there is a fundamental imbalance between what voters want and what government is able to deliver.

The party's shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram, who is joining Howard, has already set out some of the party's thinking.

"The EU is faced with two options," he said in a recent speech.

"It can defy history and commonsense and try to become a counterweight bloc in rivalry with America, a centralised supranational institution with a single foreign policy, a single economic policy and all the outward attributes of a single state.

"Or it can attempt to reform itself to become less centralised and more flexible, more in empathy with the aspirations of its people, an organisation that can deliver them economic prosperity, and can work with the US as a genuine partnership of sovereign nations."

British dream

Howard gave a hint of his direction in a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank earlier this week when he set out his belief in the "British Dream".

"No one should be over-powerful. Not trade unions. Not corporations. Not the government. Not the European Union," he said.

"Wherever I see bullying by the over-mighty, I will oppose it, and stand up for people's rights and freedoms."