ABSTRACT
What an idea! The same currency circulating from the Algarve to Lapland, from Shannon to Vienna. With the introduction of notes and coins in 2002, the process of European monetary integration has come to its conclusion in twelve countries. At the end of the bloodiest of all centuries, Western Europe has come to peace. It has agreed upon new institutions to manage its affairs jointly, and opened its market of 350 million people. The creation of a European currency is an impressive symbol of this achievement. The path to the euro has been a long and tortuous one. More than thirty years ago, the Werner Plan, for the first time, set out a strategy for European monetary integration – and failed. However, the quest for monetary stability continued. It led to the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979, without which European Monetary Union (EMU) would not have been possible. Many factors – political, economic, institutional, historic, normative, and personal – have contributed to the Maastricht Treaty of 1991. This pinned down the objective of an EMU. The factors that made governments stick to their commitments up to the start of EMU on 1 January 1999, and after, are manifold. Through all those years, an important convergence of economic ideas and reasoning has taken place in Europe. But despite this deepening policy consensus no one could be sure until spring 1998 whether EMU would really start as scheduled.
