Welcome to euroland
By Alex Brummer, Mark Milner and Martin Walker
1 January 1999
Europe today took its boldest step towards integration when 11 states scrapped centuries of history to adopt the euro as their common currency.
Euroland, as the new currency bloc is known, will be one of the world’s economic powerhouses, embracing more than 300 million people and responsible for one-fifth of the world’s output – not far behind the United States.
The arrival of the euro is emblematic of Europe’s 50-year drive to bury the ghost of two world wars and usher in a period of harmony and stability based on common economic interests and developing political and defence ties. It grows out of the ideals established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957.
Amid the elan, enthusiasm and balloons which attended the birth at a champagne reception in Brussels yesterday, there were still shadows over the project. Notably absent from the party was the Chancellor, Gordon Brown – Britain remains outside euroland – and there was bickering about the future leadership of the all-powerful European central bank.
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Euro love is not enough
Mark Milner
2 January 1999
So, the first 11 has taken the field. The single currency has been born. It has even been used. A senior executive of the credit card company, Visa, might claim to be the first to do so when he paid in euros for a bottle of champagne at a Frankfurt hotel, just after midnight on Friday.
At the euro launch party, the French finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, declared himself “no less French, but a little more European”. Carlo Ciampi, his Italian counterpart, was even more fulsome. “It may seem utopian, but here we are, and today I feel I am a European who was born in Italy. Money, the manifestation and token of sovereignty, is no longer national but European.” Fine words, but then “project Europe” has never lacked noble apologists to follow in the footsteps of Jean Monnet, the French technocrat and one-time cognac salesman who dreamed up the 1950 Schuman plan which created the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor to the European Union.
For most, however, the reality falls somewhat short of Mr Ciampi’s utopia. The EU is the product of intelligent – although frequently less than enlightened – self-interest, usually defined in national terms. It has, to date, been the more robust for it.
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The single currency makes its debut: Europe’s papers greet the new era
2 January 1999
