On 25 October 1985, the proposal for Hermes was presented to the partner nations of the ESA. A deadline of March 1987 was set for the 'Europeanisation' of the programme, under which portions of work for Hermes was assigned to various members; the outlined work share attributed 15 per cent to West Germany, 13 per cent to Italy, 7 per cent to Belgium, 5 per cent to the Netherlands, 4 per cent each to the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden, and 2 per cent or less to Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Ireland; potential participation by Norway and Canada was also mooted. France held a 50 per cent share of the work, although CNES was reported as being open to further redistribution of the work dependent upon individual ESA partners increasing their contributing stake in the programme. Early on, there was optimism that securing the funding to proceed from ESA members would not be difficult.