Against a background of drooping eurozone growth (the consensus forecast is 1.6 per cent this year) I met no one in France who was celebrating the 20th birthday of the euro, despite European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s imaginative toast to it as ‘a symbol of unity, sovereignty and stability [that] has delivered prosperity and protection for our citizens’. The French associate the euro with the inflation that is stoking unrest, but only the very old feel nostalgic for the franc (and they tend to mean the pre-1960 ‘old franc’, of which there were 100 to the new one).
In summary, southern Europeans, especially Greeks, regard the euro as an instrument of German hegemony, while for Beneluxers like Juncker, it’s clearly more efficient than the tinpot currencies they had before. The Irish regret gambling with it in their ‘Celtic tiger’ days but still see it as a symbol of progress.
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