FORMER European Commission president, Mr Jacques Delors, yesterday said the European Union's summit last week was a "fiasco" and that he had been "shocked by German arrogance". He also accused Bonn of "allergy towards southern European states, such as Spain and Italy, which hoped to join a single European currency from 1999.

"It was a fiasco, there's no other word," Mr Delors told Europe 1 radio, when speaking about the Amsterdam summit.

Mr Delors, an architect of the Maastricht Treaty, said the summit avoided the key issue of how to enlarge the bloc to eastern Europe.

"The German arrogance at Amsterdam shocked me," he added.

Mr Delors said German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had refused a "completely justified" French demand for "a true coordination of economic polices" as a counterbalance to a future independent EU central bank.

However, he did believe the euro would be launched on time.