THE IRONY is acute. In less than a week, the two countries heading the drive for a single European currency are now the ones most likely to derail it.

First, we had the open row between the Bundesbank and the German government over Chancellor Kohl's alleged fiddling of the books - "revaluing" the country's gold reserves - in order to meet the economic convergence criteria for the Euro.

Then we had France's president Jacques Chirac calling a snap election to give his centre-right coalition government a stronger base and a clear run into economic and monetary union - and getting blown out of the water by the Left.

The rectitude of Germany's central bank versus the political creative accounting of its government seriously wobbled the EU's plans for a single currency.

Now, surely, the upshot of the French election, which leaves Chirac a lame-duck president, make them look very sick indeed.

What happened in France was not that the voters were against the Euro per se, but they did not want the economic pain that goes with meeting the conditions for joining.

Hence the victory handed to Socialist leader Lionel Jospin who promised to renegotiate the terms of economic and monetary union.

So where now with EMU?

Such a state of affairs could lead the EU governments to abandon the single currency altogether or, at least, delay it for several years.

And what a bitter rub this must prove for the Tories in Britain who ripped themselves apart over the Euro and were wiped out because of it - to see it now jeopardised by the two countries that were all for it.

But should we be so surprised at this departure?

The timetable for EMU was, after all, plainly over-ambitious and the convergence criteria both too strict and politically sensitive - as the French experience has shown - for it to be achievable by its 1999 target date.

Besides, just what was the rush anyway?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.