Jon di Paolo's otherwise excellent article on proposed Regional Government only touched on the European connection when reporting Sir Michael Spicer's views. It should concern us all that this obvious connection to European Union policy is always played down.

The Government's QUANGO's and pressure groups, try to claim their proposals for these unwanted and unnecessary regional assemblies are nothing to do with the EU. This is demonstrably untrue! Apart from being a fundamentally bad idea in itself, it is strange that the proponents of regional government can't bring themselves to admit that it is actually EU policy they are trying to introduce by the back door.

The full title of the EU is "The European Union of the Regions" and it is intended to achieve full, federal integration by 2009, with 111 separate regions, each with its own assembly answering directly to Brussels. This will now have to be adjusted, because of the extra eastern European states which are being admitted in 2004. The UK has been allotted 12 of these regions.

Historically, in many of the continental countries, a form of regional government has always operated; especially in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. These have simply been incorporated into the EU plan, without any complaint, because their people are used to this form of government. However, like so much of EU legislation, it is alien to the British people and conflicts with our idea of freedom and independence.

The plan was devised in 1996 by the small socialist elite of professional bureaucrats, whom we have no opportunity to elect or remove, but who are shaping the future of Europe without our involvement. It was ratified by John Major, when he signed the Maastricht Treaty, and is set out in Article 198a.

The map the EU Parliament produced to show the regions, had the Channel Islands and part of Kent (containing the Channel Tunnel) belonging to France and Gibraltar belonging to Spain. England was not even named.

Our own Government is stealthily working on the process and has already succeeded in establishing assemblies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London; which are, in reality, regions of the EU. Now they have passed the Bill to split England into a further eight regions but, when you look at the proposed 12 "devolved" regions for the UK, they fit exactly with the EU's own map of the regions in its federal state.

EU Document 501 PC0083 sets up the nomenclature of statistical units as "a single, coherent system for dividing up the EU's territory". All 12 EU regions in the UK are classified by the letters "UK" plus a further letter to identify the individual region. We in Worcestershire are to lose our county and probably our district councils, and be lumped in with Hereford, Shropshire, Warwick, Stafford and the West Midlands conurbation. This impractical, soulless amalgam will be called the "UKG Euro-Region".

England is too large to form a single Euro-Region, so it cannot simply have its own parliament or assembly, like Scotland and Wales. A method had to be found to regionalise it, so New Labour have hit upon offering it as a means of providing more "local democracy". If this were its true aim, the Government could simply hand back the powers to our county councils and metropolitan boroughs, which have been appropriated over the last 40 years. If Mr Blair gets his way with the EU Constitution and Regional Government, England, as an entity, will cease to exist, possibly as early as 2006.

Richard Spencer, Court Road, Malvern.