La Dimensió internacional de l'euro

Resum

The euro will give Europe the political and economic weight it merits. The Maastricht summit of 1992 decided on the monetary and economic union and the name of the currency was chosen in Madrid in 1995. Jean Monnet had wanted to introduce a common currency from early on as it process of small steps. The currency will have taken 50 years to come into being. The optimistic Werner Report had already wanted a single currency in 1980. In 1979 Roy Jenkings established the European Monetary System. But the eighties were a difficult period with an identity crisis which was overcome with the new democratically elected European Parliament. The pressure of European multinationals grouped in the European Round Table and the 1982 crisis convinced politicians of the need to reinforce the European Union. The collapse of communism, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, gives a new and ambitious dimension to Europe. The Delors Plan is the old Monnet dream. The euro wants to be a stable currency and even savings of 0.3% of GNP are important, given a European Budget which is only 1.3% of European GNP. Now is the moment of truth. As Helmut Kohl said of Germany, the objective is a European Germany, not it Germanised Europe. The ceeding of sovereignty will produce a European political dimension in the next century. But the situation is not as favourable today us when the single currency was decided. Without economic growth it will be difficult to move forward. The European Union is not a free trade zone but a political project. We are a small part of the world with a considerable weight. By 2010 Europe will be a single community with a comparable weight to the USA. The post-Wall world wants peace, prosperity and growth, in democracy and a free market.