British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said the UK government would carry out an additional four studies to feed into its assessment of the economic case for adopting the euro.
The move could be seized on by the anti-euro camp as erecting new hurdles to joining the single currency but Treasury officials insisted it did not alter the government's approach or the five economic tests it set back in 1997.
The studies will complement the five tests that the government has committed to passing judgment on by June. The government has said it will offer the public a referendum on euro entry if the five tests prove it makes economic sense for Britain to scrap the pound.
The new studies will look at exchange rate and macroeconomic adjustment, at the transition to the euro and at the overall framework for the existing five economic tests. The fourth study will bring together specially commissioned papers by international academics on aspects of British membership of the euro, Brown said.
The studies will feed into the existing five tests and are not designed to set new parameters for the possible adoption of the euro, the Treasury said.
In September, the Treasury said it would carry out a number of studies into the effects on prices, the housing market and fiscal policy of joining the euro on top of its tests. It said it would publish the 14 studies along with the assessment of the five tests. But Brown said recently there would be an additional few studies without giving details.
Recently, comments by cabinet ministers and media reports have suggested opponents of euro entry are gaining the upper hand. But Brown, widely held to be more sceptical over euro entry than Prime Minister Tony Blair, rejected on Sunday a newspaper report that said he had privately ruled out euro entry.
He insisted that the decision on whether to push for euro entry would depend on the outcome of the five economic tests. Many Britons remain hostile to adopting the euro. The case for joining is not helped by struggling European economies.
