Kohl scandal grows in dimension

The scandal surrounding secret cash payments to Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor, has become an international, and far more serious, affair.

Francois Mitterrand is reported to have personally sanctioned a donation from French government funds to help Kohl's Christian Democrats win elections in 1994.

Mitterrand and Kohl had worked closely together for more than a decade to cement Franco-German relations and to drive forward European integration. Many people across Europe have reason to applaud their partnership.

Nevertheless, the scale of the hypocrisy revealed by the latest disclosure is breathtaking. Here was secret foreign funding for a national party in an age when it has become universally accepted that party funds should come only from domestic sources.

Here was a socialist leader privately helping to defeat his party's allies, Germany's Social Democrats.

For years one of the charges against Europe's political elites has been that they pursue European integration in a high-handed manner without seeking to engage the people of Europe in their enterprise.

The Kohl/Mitterrand scandal provides the latest and most vivid illustration of arrogance and dishonesty.

The Prime Minister (Tony Blair) rightly believes that public opinion must be won over to the wider cause of European co- operation before there can be any question of Britain joining the single currency.

It is now clear that Blair needs to attend to a prior task: to make sure that the European Union and its leading actors abandon a high-handedness and disregard for fair-dealing that could, unchecked, undermine the whole European endeavor.

-- The Evening Standard, London