The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, yesterday outlined to MPs Britain's approach to sweeping changes that could see up to a dozen more countries joining the EU.
He told the House of Commons that Britain would be prepared to drop its number of EU Commissioners from two to one, along with other large countries, in return for a greater say in majority voting issues.
Mr Cook outlined the three big issues facing the UK as a result of enlargement: the size of the Commission, the weighting of votes and the extension of Qualified Majority Voting (QMV).
The Tories, as expected, seized on the proposed extension of QMV to accuse the government of giving up the veto on vital issues.
But Mr Cook has always made it clear that five issues - defence, taxation, Britain's rebate, treaty changes and border controls - would never be surrendered to majority voting.
He said last night, after talks in Brussels with fellow foreign ministers: "I believe the European Union has a very grave obligation to prepare itself for enlargement, in the same way as the countries of central and eastern Europe are preparing themselves for joining the EU."
The shadow foreign secretary, Mr Francis Maude, led a pre-emptive strike from the Tories, saying: "Labour's cover-up must be blown apart. We have already exposed Labour's plans to scrap the pound as soon as they think they can get away with it. We must now expose how they plan to let Britain slide into a single European super-state by stealth."
Meanwhile the Tory leader, Mr William Hague, yesterday took his campaign to keep the pound on the road and said he would make more countrywide tours to "bring politics alive again".
He was speaking to a crowd of 300 in St Albans, delivering his message that Britain should keep its own currency at least for the lifetime of the next parliament.
Mr Hague, heckled only briefly, said there were four reasons to keep the pound: jobs, taxation, pensions, and the right of the UK to run its own affairs. Speaking beside his campaign truck, he said: "The pound is under threat from a government that wants to abolish it."
He told the crowd that the government was trying to scrap the pound by stealth and was then heckled by a passer-by who said: "Why do you think you lost the last election, you plonker?"