A Common Currency in Europe? From the Werner Plan to the Euro: An Incomplete and Dangerous Integration

This paper shows the reasons why the European institution created thecommon currency, the endogenous factors (as the countries members' resistanceto the monetary integration) and the exogenous ones (the economicand financial crisis that arrived during the period under analysis)that brought about the long delay of the birth of the Euro. During thedebate about the birth of the common currency in the 1960s and 1970s,all the most important characteristics of the future Euro were defined.Before its birth (considered fundamental for the political, economic andsocial integration of Western Europe), some economists and bankers putin evidence what was necessary (and what had to be avoided) in order toallow the new common currency to give a real advantage to European citizensand enterprises. They underlined that the success of the Euro (andof all the EU members) asked for a strong political and economic integration:they in fact declared that «Europe is realized by a common currency, or it will never be realized» and that monetary integration was necessaryfor the existence of the European Institution. So the failure of theEMU will not depend on the Euro: the ones who are really responsiblearepoliticians and economists who continue to ignore the suggestionsand risks indicated in the past, and so they do not allow the enlargementof the European institutions' powers and more particularly those of theECB.