The Queen speaks out for Europe

IN A MOVE unlikely to please many Conservatives at home, the Queen began her state visit to Germany yesterday with a determinedly political declaration of Britain's commitment to Europe. 'We British are Europeans,' she told guests at the welcoming banquet hosted by President Richard von Weizsacker. 'That means that we are your partners in the European Community, working closely with our friends and allies for prosperity and peace.'

The Queen also tackled head-on the highly sensitive matter of the falling-out between London and Bonn over the past few months. 'British-German friendship is a living reality,' she said, adding that 'we have too much to lose to allow' quarrels to undermine the relationship.

The decision by Buckingham Palace and the presidential office in Bonn to invest the five-day royal visit with such a manifest European message, at a time when the British government's policy over Maastricht is under attack at home, will be interpreted as an unusually bold political intervention by the Queen. For the first time on a royal state visit, the European Community flag flies alongside the Union flag and the German colours.

In his speech at the banquet last night in the splendid Schloss Augustusburg, near Cologne, President von Weizsacker said the 'historic importance and message of this royal visit' are that 'Britain lies at the heart of Europe and that its future is at one with Europe's'. He emphasised that 'we in Germany are totally convinced that we need Britain's particular contribution to Europe more than ever before'.

While the royal visit, the third to Germany, but the first to the united country, has been planned for more than a year, both guest and host seized upon its timing to pour balm on to the open wounds of relations between London and Bonn. In a clear reference to the row over the currency crisis, as well as differences over the planned V2 rocket-bomb celebrations in Germany and the memorial to Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris in Britain, the Queen said of the British and Germans that 'like all close friends, we do not always see eye to eye, but, as friends should, we try not to let the sun go down on our quarrels'.

The Queen described the two countries as 'closer together than ever before. We have achieved much together, and we can achieve much more'. President von Weizsacker expressed relief that the 'war of words' between Bonn and London was over. 'The great challenges that both our countries face bring us far closer together than the fractiousness provoked by passing problems can ever drive us apart,' he said.

Much of the royal visit is to take place in eastern Germany, the first time the Queen has been into what was Communist Europe. In underscoring British support for Germany's rebuilding of the east - 'the division of Germany was always artificial and an affront to freedom,' said the Queen - she is also seeking to make amends for the bitterness in Germany left by Margaret Thatcher's unenthusiastic response to German unification in 1990.

Earlier yesterday, crowds waving German and British flags applauded the Queen at Bonn's new art museum. 'This British hatred of the Germans - I don't think it'll last. The British are far too decent,' said one bystander.

One woman, asked what she thought of the Queen, replied: 'I was born in Dresden two days after her in 1926, so I have always kept up with her life. We have lived a life together, and yet apart.

'For us (in Germany), it has always been much harder. We've had to come to terms with our past - a past one cannot hold our children responsible for,' she added.

(Photograph omitted)