The Coming of the EURO: Letters from Italy, Germany and England

Abstract

Italy belongs to the European Union, and more, it belongs to it since the very beginning. Whose status as a founding member of the European Community could be better documented than Italy's signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957? Such historic and symbolic weights surely justify high moral expectations. This might have been one of the messages brought to Italian S. Berlusconi by the European J. Fischer last month “Be a respectable and progressive European partner and the European Union can successfully face the two challenges of the immediate future: EMU and Eastern enlargement.” In a subsequent discussion at the European University Institute in Florence on 17 January 2002, the German Foreign Minister explained his convictions by passionate verbal and non-verbal arguments. ‘This is today's Europe', he announced proudly, when showing a one-Euro coin to a baffled audience. The powerful gesture was unmistakable: Europe had entered another stage in its gradual evolution to an ‘ever closer Union'. Not only the ‘Monnet method’ but also the ‘money method’ would ensure the further inseparability of the national economies and merge them into the internal market. With excitement Mr. Fischer recalled the envy of his British colleagues when Euro-kits were distributed at a Council meeting to the representatives of the Euro-zone in December. [Indeed, at a Press Conference held in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on 14 January 2002, Fischer recalled that the British colleagues were utterly excited about the starter kit and “behaved almost like a gang of children at the sight of a marvel” The Editors].