Brussels, 12/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - In an interview published in Global Thinking, Sir Stephen Wall, former British Permanent Representative to the EU (former Personal Secretary of John Major at Downing Street and currently European affairs advisor to Tony Blair and Head of the European Cabinet at the Cabinet Office) recognises how experience can change the attitude of public opinion to the European Union. Sir Stephen points out that, "When people actually see it, they can see that it's not a sort of sinister, Machiavellian organisation. He explains that the issue of some countries having difficulty in sharing sovereignty arises partly out of historical reasons, with de Gaulle's veto, for example, on Britain's accession being, "one of the most traumatic events in Britain during my teenage years". Explaining how things have developed since then, Sir Stephen points out that, "during those long nights at the Nice negotiations, we and the Germans worked together on a paper which we gave to the French Presidency on the way through the voting issue. That had never happened in our time at the EU before and it would have been unthinkable a few years ago that the Germans would have wanted to do that with us, and would have been prepared to do it". (GlobalThinking is the Foreign policy newsletter edited by Mark Leonard. Elizabeth House, 39 York Road, London SE1 7NQ. E-mail: info@fpc.org.uk ).