THE IRONY is acute - and may be bitter, too, for the 14,000 British workers whose jobs depend on the £40billion Eurofighter project, now facing another serious upset.

For the German government looks like delaying its orders for the warplane until 2002, as it embarks on massive public spending cuts in order to meet the criteria in 1999 for the European single currency.

The irony, of course, is that of the most powerful economy in Europe being shown up as being so unsound that it must slash its budget so severely in order to comply with the terms for economic convergence for the Euro currency. Contrast this with the robust British economy - and the government's £16billion commitment to purchasing 232 Eurofighters for the RAF - while, despite being on course for the convergence criteria, the country is in no rush to sign up for the single currency.

The government would do well to ask of the Germans what is the point of their haste to forge a Euro-currency when, like them, other EU countries are way behind with the convergence criteria and economies, industries and employment must suffer in any austerity squeeze to catch up.

And sceptics over the single currency might point out, too, that one reason for the UK's economic recovery was the loosening of the reins that followed Britain's departure from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which was itself a framework for monetary union.

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