 The recession that had started shortly before Major became Prime Minister was declared over in April 1993, when the economy grew by 0.2%.Unemployment also started to fall; it had stood at nearly 3 million by the end of 1992, but by the spring of 1997 it had fallen to 1.7 million.On becoming Prime Minister, Major had promised to keep Britain "at the very heart of Europe", and claimed to have won "game, set and match for Britain" – by negotiating the Social Chapter and Single Currency opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty, and by ensuring that there was no overt mention of a "Federal" Europe and that foreign and defence policy were kept as matters of inter-governmental co-operation, in separate "pillars" from the supranational European Union.