Blair: Current EU crisis 'opportunity for change'

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today warned that the European Union must modernise or risk failure as an economic bloc and as a social model, and said the EU’s current political crisis was an opportunity for a change.

Setting out an agenda for Britain’s six-month EU presidency, which begins on July 1, Blair told the European Parliament in Brussels that the 25-member bloc must continue expanding and warned that to shut its doors would give rise to new nationalism and xenophobia.