I fear it may have gone the same way as Honest John's other great idea, the hard ecu.

During this period, they also set about rubbishing the British proposals for competing currencies, and for the hard ecu.

Giscard d'Estaing called the hard ecu a 'positive contribution' after a meeting with John Major as Chancellor.

This they did at an Intergovernmental Conference in 1837 when Hessen, defensive of its national sovereignty, suggested a parallel currency rather like the hard ecu.

It also favoured hardening the existing European currency unit rather than creating a separate "hard ecu", as proposed by the UK [see p. 37969].

Count Lambsdorff, the former Economics Minister, now Chairman of the centrist FDP, delivered a particularly strong attack on John Major's hard ecu plan, calling it 'nonsense'.

In June 1990, Major suggested that the proposed Single European Currency should be a "hard ecu", competing for use against existing national currencies; this idea was not in the end adopted.

France has talked sweetly of promoting use of the 'hard ecu', as Britain has proposed, on the way to EMU (for France, any alternative to the D-mark is appealing).

"How on earth are the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, commending the hard ECU as they strive to do, to be taken as serious prticipants in the debate against that kind of background noise?"

The idea was that "the hard ECU" - for hard European Currency Unit - would be there for companies and individuals who wanted to eliminate the fees, exchange-rate uncertainties and time required to keep changing currencies as they conducted business across Europe.

As currently envisaged, "stage three" involved the transfer of powers to a European central bank and the creation of a single European currency (rather than a "hard ecu" used in parallel with existing European currencies as proposed by the UK - see p. 37969).

Mr. Major, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and at Mrs. Thatcher's insistence, devised a plan for an alternative to a single European currency - the hard ecu, that all Europeans could use if they wanted to, or ignore when the second phase of monetary union began in 1994.

Under the 'hard ECU' proposal put forward by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, a new institution would be set up to manage the hard ECU, the European Monetary Fund (EMF).

In a speech in London on June 20 John Major, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, set out a gradualist alternative to the Delors plan for economic and monetary union [see p. 36598], envisaging the introduction of the "hard ecu", a new parallel Eurocurrency in its own right.

Solchaga's plan, in which Greece, Ireland and Portugal showed particular interest, also echoed the proposals put forward in June by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, for a European monetary fund which would oversee the introduction of a parallel currency, the "hard ecu", during Stage 2.

Whereas the Commission's draft treaty proposed the creation of a single European currency supplanting national currencies, the "hard ecu" as proposed by the UK would float alongside the existing currencies in the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS).

On Jan. 8 Norman Lamont, the United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced detailed proposals on how a new currency - the "hard ecu" (separate from the existing European currency unit - ECU)- could be created and managed by a European monetary fund (EMF).