Europe needs to reform its agricultural policies and should maintain its good ties with the United States, the leaders of Britain and Hungary said Thursday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Gyurcsany, also endorsed the European Union's proposed constitution, which is to be signed later this month by the EU's 25 member countries. Blair and Gyurcsany said in a joint article written for Thursday's "Progressive Governance" meeting, a gathering in Hungary of center-left politicians and intellectuals, that the EU's agricultural policy needed "fundamental reform." "It ill serves our taxpayers, our farmers, our environment and partners in the developing world," they said. They also said the EU's constitution would strengthen its institutions while keeping "the free will of nations, collectively expressed," as its source of authority. "We need a union of nations, rather than a 'United States of Europe,"' the two leaders wrote. --more 1355 Local Time 1055 GMT
