Notes on the process of Euro creation from the Sixties to the New Millennium

The process of monetary integration within the EU began in the late Sixties when the need for a common currency in the MEC became evident. Planned for the beginning of the Eighties, the common currency, the Euro, arrived only at the end of the Twentieth century, both because of the consequences of the oil shock and the great difficulty of harmonizing very different economies in a context characterized, after the USSR fall, by the decrease of intra-community solidarity. The EMU creation guaranteed the citizens and businesses of the member countries greater strength and stability of the new currency, as well as the elimination of currency conversion costs and those associated with fluctuating exchange rates. However, the limited powers given to the ECB and the use of parameters designed in a very different economic world from that of the New Millennium made the Eurozone less stable than its proponents had envisioned.