What future for the single currency?

In the article ‘Euro – just Esperanto money?’ published by the European online magazine Cafebabel.com, Nils aus dem Moore underlines the euro’s success and stresses the need for member states to adopt the single currency to remain influential during the next 50 years.

This article highlights the results of a survey led by the International Herald Tribune in co-operation with the American market research company Harris Interactive in five European countries and in the US. According to the poll, an EU collapse seems unlikely as 85% of French people, 84% of Italians, 82% of Spaniards, 76% of Germans and 62% of Britons are convinced that the EU will still exist in 50 years time.

Regarding the future of the EU’s main method of payment, the survey reflects the indisputable success of the euro. Despite the debate about prices hikes, the euro has proven to be very successful both inside and outside the EU, with 76% in the UK, 93% in Spain and 72% of US respondents believing the euro’s future is secure. “As a quarter of foreign currency reserves worldwide are now held in euro, it has become a serious rival to the US dollar,” states the article.

Moreover, the euro is seen as an EU ‘strength’. German Chancellor Angela Merkel included in the Berlin Declaration that “the common market and the euro make [us] strong”. 

However, for the euro to be able to strengthen the EU in the long run, the new members from Central and Eastern Europe will have to start considering introducing the currency. “The euro can only realise its full strength if the eurozone and the common market are brought into line,” argues Nils aus dem Moore. 

Without this sense of perspective, he argues, the euro will have the same destiny as ‘Esperanto’ and may become a sign of division, rather than a symbol of unification, in the EU.

To read the article in full, please click here.