Wanted: A Rambo of a currency

DURING the next four and a half years, the Santer Commission will be mainly judged by its performance in relation to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference and the introduction of Economic and Monetary Union. The Commission's Green Paper on the transition to a single currency is a welcome and very necessary reminder that EMU is still very much on the Union's political agenda. Its warning that there is scarcely enough time to make the necessary preparations to honour the treaty's commitment to a single currency by January 1 1999 at the latest needs to be taken very seriously.