10 years after the European Central Bank was established, European leaders gathered in Frankfurt’s Old Opera to celebrate the accomplishment. How have things turned out and has the ambitious decision of launching an economic and monetary union paid off? For the architects of the Euro, June 1st, 1998 marks the date when years of dreaming and haggling bore fruit in the form of the ECB itself, based in Germany’s financial capital. On that date 11 countries drew closer to merge their currencies and finally the Euro was launched on Jan. 1, 1999 on financial markets; Euro notes and coins were introduced January 1st, 2002.
The ECB now controls monetary policy for 15 euro countries, soon to be 16 with the addition of Slovakia, meaning that the eurozone stretches from Finland to Cyprus. Long gone are the days when American economist Martin Feldstein predicted, already in 1997, that divisions among the European countries created by the Euro might lead to war between nations using it. Nothing further from the truth could have happened and as the beginning of the second decade of the Euro approaches, the single European currency has become a valuable asset supporting the stability and dynamism of the European Union as a whole.
Its beginnings had some difficulties especially among the citizens of some countries which understandably were concerned about giving up their own currencies for emotional and practical reasons. Also for a while the Euro was weak trading as low as 82 U.S. cents in the year 2000. But it has recovered strongly, some opinions will say too strongly, trading these days around $1.56 per Euro. This is beginning to create some worries about inflation. Nevertheless, experienced people such as Michael Schubert, an ECB expert at the Commerzbank in Frankfurt, have said that Europe’s Central Bank has managed to clear away the doubts that surrounded the euro at the beginning 10 years ago. “The reality is that it’s functioned very well,” Schubert said
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