During a radio broadcast in July 1940 Walter Funk, the German economics minister, put forward a plan for the reorganisation of the European economy. His New Economic Order proposed that productive activity in occupied and satellite states be co-ordinated under German direction, concentrating agricultural activity in the East and locating the greater part of European industrial production in Germany itself. The idea of creating a pan-European customs' union was expressly rejected; instead, trade between the different states was to be facilitated by a clearing system, run from Germany and denominated in Marks. Stability of exchange rates was one of the objectives of this system; this would therefore have the consequence that price movements throughout Europe would be controlled from Berlin. Germany's existing system of contract prices for agricultural products would also be extended, farmers and peasants being assured of markets for produce and guaranteed prices.

This scheme was outlined in September that same year by Charles Guillebaud, author of a recently published analysis of the German economic recovery, in a lecture at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. Funk's plan was placed by Guillebaud in the context of previous schemes for co-ordination of the European economy, such as List's proposal for an Anglo-German alliance, and Friedrich Naumann's later concept of Mitteleuropa, in which the Central European economy was to be directed by the staff of a Central European Economic Commission.