La aparición del euro

El Euro como precio político a pagar por Alemania y su reunificación. Historia bien conocida, pero que conviene revisitar.

A whole literature, enough to keep you busy for the best part of a lifetime, was developed by economists to answer questions such as these, culminating in the crowning glory, the Theory of Optimum Currency Areas; that is, a theory about the best (i.e. most efficient) grouping of countries to form single currency blocs. And this theoretical edifice is a pretty impressive structure, well worthy of a Nobel Prize or two.

As you may have guessed, however, this vast literature had next to no bearing on how the euro came into being or how it was structured. As things turned out, the pace of currency union was forced by events – and not even economic events at that.

In November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and just over two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. These events made possible the reunification of Germany after nearly 50 years of separation. But not everyone saw this as an unalloyed blessing. What would Russia think? It still had nearly 400,000 troops stationed on German soil. What would France think? And what would be the UK’s view?

At first, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was dead against reunification and was in close communication not only with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, but also with America’s President, Ronald Reagan. If reunification was going to happen, West Germany had to have the support of France, but that was not a foregone conclusion.

French fears of German dominance were very real. Why make things worse, France might reasonably think, by letting Germany get bigger and stronger? After all, the French writer François Charles Mauriac had said in the 1960s that he was so fond of Germany that he was glad there were two of her. He surely spoke for many Frenchmen – and people of other nationalities.

In the event, French President François Mitterrand did agree to reunification, but he exacted a price. Germany would have to agree to submerge the deutschmark into a new European currency, subsequently to be called the euro, and in the process emasculate the Bundesbank, which had ruled the roost over the European economy for the last few decades. West Germany’s Chancellor Kohl agreed to this price and so the euro was born. The greatest monetary experiment in the history of humankind happened when it did, and how it did, because it appeared to make political sense at the time.

Ergo: Esas fueron la fuerzas que se concitaron para crear el euro. Las justificaciones económicas vinieron después, Ad Hoc. Como se ha visto, eran trucadas, falsas, amañadas, interesadas.