THE European Union's Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Mr Yves Thibault de Silguy, yesterday defended the single European currency and pleaded for British participation in the project.

"The Commission is convinced that UK participation would be food for the UK and good for Europe," he told citizens of the most Euro sceptic nation in Europe.

Mr de Silguy said the business of Britain's numerous transnational corporations would be strengthened if the country signed up to European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

But he stressed that Brussels had no intention of imposing its will on the British public. "The Commission has no intention of interfering in the political choice the UK faces. It is a purely national decision, in which we have no role," he said.

Under the terms of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty, Britain won the right to opt out of EMU, which is to be introduced in January 1999.

A survey published by the Guardian yesterday showed that 64 per cent of Britons were opposed to the country joining a single currency.

For his part, Mr de Silguy predicted: "It seems likely that the UK will meet the necessary conditions for membership" of a single currency.

"Whatever the UK decides, I am convinced that the other member states will go ahead on schedule. Nobody and nothing will prevent them," he said.

Mr de Silguy defended the creation of a new exchange rate mechanism to set limits on the fluctuation between the currencies of countries which will adopt the single currency in 1999 and on those which will not adopt the euro from the outset.