Euro, symbol of union” “

The process of European unification, opened on 9 May 1950 by the proposal of French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, with the support of German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Italian Premier Alcide De Gasperi, to create a European Community of Coal and Steel, products that form the staple of every effort of war, is a unique event in the history of humanity. For the first time, some European states, in the first place France and Germany, economically, politically, spiritually and morally bankrupt, decided to break with the tragic destiny of history, to say “no”, to repudiate a cruel past, reject their opposing destinies, construct a common destiny, and begin to proceed along a new path, that of reconciliation and friendship. That path has not been abandoned. It has led to peace, a peace that has endured for over fifty years. It has led to prosperity. The building of Europe, with so many setbacks and so many successes, has gone ahead. The Union has been geographically enlarged. It has been economically strengthened. But it has almost always stopped at the threshold of politics, in spite of the election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage from 1979 onwards. Now Europe is preparing to open a new chapter, apparently economic, but in reality with unpredictable political and social consequences. Created in 1999, the Euro, after an initial role limited to trading transactions, will shortly become the single currency used daily by a large part of Europeans, the sole currency present in the pockets of each European citizen. These consequences are all the more unpredictable since the creation of the Euro is a quite unprecedented, unique and extraordinary event. Ancient peoples, ancient States, with an ancient history behind them, and with so many scars on their bodies, and the memory of a glorious but turbulent history in their memory, will, in a few weeks’ time, abandon their own currencies, symbols of their sovereignty, i.e. of their identity, of their national mythology. This abandonment will be to the benefit of a strange currency, a single currency, a unique currency, a currency without a past, without a history and more especially without a State, whereas throughout monetary history currency has always been created by the State, precisely as a way of national self-identification. This process has been conducted peacefully, on the basis of the popular will. The single currency is not just a technical improvement, of the kind that the process of European integration has made us familiar with over the last fifty years. Currency is in fact not only a convenient tool, useful for trade, but also a political symbol, and the single currency is the sign of a common citizenship. The change of currency signifies the beginning of an event that resembles nothing else experienced in the course of history. Precisely because the single currency has such an enormous symbolic charge, it is a political lever of great importance. It will certainly change the consciousness of Europeans, but in a way that no one can predict today. The daily conduct of individuals at the level of economic habits, consumption, social claims, political reactions inside each country, will be changed, without us being able in any way to anticipate the reactions, also because the practical difficulties in our day-to-day life will not be negligible. But in the long run the single currency will lead to the birth of a new consciousness and cause unexpected reactions. The Euro is an economic invention, but it is also, and perhaps especially, a political act. It is born from a Europe that does not exist politically, that is not a State. What sovereignty may it represent? Will the Euro lead to the birth of Europe? Here lies a question that is fundamentally without an answer for the time being. Here lies the unknown future of a new stage in the destiny of Europe, this old continent capable of inventing a new sign of union through a new currency.