The euro turns 20 and is preparing for new challenges for the future.
The single European currency, which many believed at the height of the sovereign debt crisis between 2011 and 2012, is now the currency of 19 EU countries, used every day by about 350 million people, and the second largest in the world. world after the dollar.
Its beginnings date back to 1988 when the then president of the EU Commission, the Frenchman Jacques Delors, created an ad hoc committee whose work laid the foundations for the Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 after tough negotiations and which formed the foundations of the currency. only European.
From there, the way forward for the new "creature" was formalized and the parameters to which the countries that wanted to adopt it had to comply: a deficit-GDP ratio of no more than 3% (after the approval of the fiscal compact, the union of budget, the ratio must not exceed 0.5% having introduced the golden clause of the balanced budget to be introduced in the Constitutions of Euroland); a debt-to-GDP ratio of less than 60% (the interpretation for the entry of Italy and Belgium, already well above 100% at the time, will be the consideration of indicators capable of demonstrating the tendency to return in the medium term); inflation no higher than 1.5% compared to the average of the three countries with the lowest inflation.
In 1995, at the European Council in Madrid, the name Ecu, with which the single currency had been baptized and until then used for the accounts, gave way to the euro.
In 1998 the European Central Bank became operational and on 1 January 1999 the euro was launched as the official currency of 11 countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Austria), to which in 2001 Greece joined.
On January 1, 2002, the first banknotes and coins were put into circulation and the national currencies withdrawn (in Italy one euro was worth 1936.27 lire). Since then, some states have been added: Slovenia (2007), Cyprus and Malta (2008), Slovakia (2009) and then Estonia (2011), Latvia (2014) and Lithuania (2015).
Today there are new projects in sight: the coin will be restyled in 2024. In recent weeks, the ECB has launched a consultation to obtain the collaboration of the citizens of the Old Continent for the new plan.
(Unioneonline / F)
