Sussex Tory hopeful Francis Maude has accused the European Commission of an "outrageous" attempt to interfere in the General Election.

The shadow foreign secretary, who is fighting the Horsham seat, made the accusation after the Commission said the party's claim of a drive towards tax harmonisation across the EU was wrong.

A document agreed by the Commission yesterday said the aim of harmonisation had been dropped and that differing tax rates could benefit the union.

Mr Maude accused the European Commission of deliberately delaying the publication of the document.

He said: "From the point of view of Britain the document got much worse during the day so the spin coming out of the European Commission was pretty misleading as well as a pretty outrageous attempt to interfere in a British Parliamentary election."

The Prime Minister, in a series of interviews with European journalists today, underlined his belief that Britain would benefit from membership of the European single currency.

But he emphasised that the economic conditions laid down by Chancellor Gordon Brown had to be met if the Government was going to recommend replacing the pound with the euro.

He said: "We have got to get over this idea that to be pro-British you have got to be anti-European."

Conservative leader William Hague said last night: "If Labour win this election the pound is sunk. If the Conservatives win the election the pound stays."

Mr Maude, in a speech to Finchley Conservatives tonight, will say that the EU has achieved much and has improved the lives of European citizens greatly.

But he will add that it needs to change and modernise because it has become far too rigid.

He and Mr Hague will renegotiate the Nice Treaty because it is "flawed".

The treaty, agreed last year, paved the way for enlargement of the EU but preserved national vetoes over areas such as tax while extending Qualified Majority Voting in other areas and re-weighting the votes of member states to take account of a bigger union.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell dismissed the Tory concerns, insisting that all the main parties were committed to retaining Britain's veto on tax matters.

May 24, 2001