(LONDON) - Britain has proposed a "European-wide funding plan" to help ease the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday, after giving details of a British rescue package for banks.

"We have invited other European countries to consider proposals we have put to them this morning on medium-term funding (and) are in active consultation about how we can adopt a European-wide funding plan," he said.

Addressing a press conference on the British rescue package, Brown said he had spoken earlier Wednesday to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating European Union presidency.

Brown attended a meeting hosted by Sarkozy in Paris at the weekend, along with their counterparts from Germany and Italy, in a bid to coordinate European efforts to calm the crisis.

He added that Britain was also talking to other Group of Seven (G7) and G20 governments about a meeting of heads of government, adding: "We are ready to put British proposals to such a meeting."

"Countries are tested in difficult times. These problems certainly started in the United States of America but they are having a big impact on our and on others' financial systems," said Brown.

Earlier Wednesday finance minister Alistair Darling announced a part-nationalisation of the country's eight main banks as part of a package worth up to 875 billion dollars to prevent a collapse of the banking system.

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