The values of the Euro

For the past ten years the Euro has been the currency of the European Union, or rather, of the 16 Member States that adopted the Euro as their means of payment. On January 16 1999, ten years ago, only 11 Countries had introduced the Euro. These were: France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, as well as Finland, Ireland, Austria, Portugal and Spain. They were joined by Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia and lastly, since January 1st 2009, by Slovakia. Also the other Member States committed themselves, in the logics of the European integration process, to progressively adhere to the Monetary Union and introduce the Euro. However, to the benefit of stability, before adopting the Euro a series of criteria ought to be met regarding budget management, indebtness and inflation that represent the reasons preventing most new Member States of Central and Eastern Europe from introducing the Euro. On the other hand, a number of Member States in Western Europe – Great Britain, Sweden and Denmark – did meet expected requirements, yet they did not enter the Euro-zone for political reasons. The first ten years of life of the euro have shown that its introduction was a major success, although not all citizens favourably welcomed the new currency. Despite consumer criticism and disappointment, the Euro’s value was acknowledged both by citizens and by the community as a whole. Those who until today were positive about the Euro’s adoption, are forced to reconsider their stance due to the financial and economic crisis that affected also Europe and that extends far beyond the ups and downs of economy that we had witnessed until today. Without the assurance of stability granted to Euro-zone Countries and without the solidarity agreement based upon the adoption of the single currency, the consequences of the crisis would have been much harder to control. It’s hard to provide citizens – and the economy – with an efficient protection while collecting funds needed to overcome the crisis. The analysis of the situation that the crisis triggered across the English Channel shows that the British will have to pay a high price for their euro-scepticism. Their rejection of the euro, along with British liberalistic philosophy in the financial and economic realms, brought about the collapse of production and trade, along with a remarkable depreciation of the English Pound. The British refused to renounce their currency, in the belief that it was more valuable than the Euro. Their ideological fixation for national sovereignty led them to give priority to national individual claims over European commonality. But the euro’s values don’t merely reside in its practical function or in its political success. There is an ideal value representing unity, solidarity and solidity. The Euro is a sign of the fact that peoples and States that accepted European currency as a unit of measure for their material values – acknowledge that their economies and trade share a common destiny. There’s more to this. The European Monetary Union, where the Euro is the Community’s currency and the European Central Bank is autonomous and supranational, represents a federal system. This system is the cornerstone of the building that the European Union – in order to comply with its vocation – is yearning to erect within the realm of constitutional developments extending beyond the Lisbon Treaty. For this reason, differently from foreign politics and security, the EU plays a major role in the framework of monetary policies also on the international plane. In the monetary Union, the European Federation signals the erection of tomorrow’s European Federation.