EURO, HISTORY’S GREATEST REVOLUTION, A TRIUMPH OF MAN’S INTELLIGENCE
By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor
PARIS First of January 2002 (IPS) In the mankind’s probable biggest triumph of intelligence, logic and reason, 12 European nations representing more than 300 million people said good by to their national currencies, some of them the oldest in the world, others symbol of national grandeur or economic power and at the stroke of midnight of Monday 31 December 2001, adopted a new currency named Euro.
"The euro is a victory for Europe. After a century of being torn apart, of wars and tribulations, our continent is finally affirming its identity and power in peace, unity and stability", French President Jacques Chirac said in a New Year's address, as millions of Europeans but also indigenous and natives from the Arctic Circle to remotes regions of Africa, the Aegean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, from New Caledonia in the Australian continent to New Guinea, in the Latin American jungles rushed to cash dispenser machines to get their new money.
Euro, Our Money.
"We will become a greater Europe with the euro'', added Romano Prodi, the Italian President of the European Union Commission in Vienna, shortly after he used the new currency to buy flowers for his wife. "We shall become stronger, wealthier'', he predicted.
"A vision is becoming reality'', Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor who with the late French Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, championed the single currency, wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Monday.
"For me, the common currency in Europe fulfils a dream. It means there is no turning back from the path toward unification of our continent'', he noted.
Experts and Euro-watchers all over Europe confirmed that the world’s and history’s largest financial and monetary switchover made a smooth smart, from capitals such as Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid to small villages in Ireland and Luxembourg, the Union’s smallest but a pioneer nation.
When the idea of equipping Europe with a single currency was aired years ago, few people but a bunch of "Euro-fanatics" would think that their conception one day would become a reality, considering the continents divisions in every aspect, from social to economy to politics and languages, traditions and cultures, that is visible on one side of the new coins, marked with national symbols of each participating nation.
"Many (German) will also be a bit wistful. The German mark meant a lot to us. We link the mark with memories of good times in Germany'', Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said. "But you can be sure: even better times are ahead", he said, adding. "We are witnessing the dawn of an age that the people of Europe have dreamt of for centuries: borderless travel and payment in a common currency''.
Not only Euro coins in Germany do not look exactly like those in circulation in France or in Belgium – though banknotes are all the same everywhere – but also it is the only currency in the world that its users spell and pronounce differently: Oero for the French, Evro for the Greeks, Aeuro for the Germans, Ieuro for the Italians and Spanish etc ..
The arrival of the notes and coins in 12 of the European Union's 15 states marks the bloc's most ambitious project to date, giving Europeans tangible, everyday proof that they share more than just an accident of geography with their neighbors.
In a logistical exercise of historic proportions, more than 15 billion banknotes and 52 billion coins - worth 646 billion Euros, or $568 billion - have been produced for the switchover with 6 billion notes and 37.5 coins already distributed to banks and stores - the front line in what has been the world's largest peacetime logistics operation.
Worries about crime proved largely unfounded with police reporting few problems except for a theft from a bank of 90,000 euros ($79,720) near the Spanish city of Zamora.
The 10-year march since European Union leaders agreed on economic and monetary union in The Dutch city of Maastricht, in December 1991 represents the triumph of political willpower over long hostile financial markets.
The euro was formally launched on January 1, 1999 as a virtual currency for inter-bank transactions when the parities of participating national currencies were irrevocably fixed.
Launched at 1,17 to the US dollars, it gradually depreciated, to be worth about 90 US cents only at the year’s end. However, politicians believe that its physical appearance Tuesday will eventually boost the Euro's worth as people round the world come into contact with it and accept that it is here to stay.
But whatever the economics, the euro owes its conception to politics. France pushed a common currency plan in 1989 to bind wealthy old rival Germany into an unbreakable alliance as the fall of the Berlin Wall gave Germans a new dominance in Europe.
The nations adopting the euro are: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. European micro States such as Monaco, Andorra and the Vatican have accepted it. So have Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans. Those staying out are Britain, Sweden and Denmark.
However, as many big stores and supermarket in these countries have announced that they would accept the new currency alongside their national ones, many economists think that, contrary to headlines by some British "gutter" press crying "Eurror or Error", the reluctant trio will have to sign up sooner than expected. ENDS EURO 1102