On the eve of the first day of 2002, when the euro became the official EU currency, this column turned to Tacitus for its judgment: ‘the ignorant called it civilisation: it was in fact a mark of their servitude’; and ended ‘the issuing of a common currency, with all that implies in terms of ideology, autonomy, political identity and assertion of power, could be a useful first step in the servitude stakes, if nothing else’.
And the last one too, if you ask the Greeks. So what is to be done? Everyone is in favour of a form of economic union, but it is time for an alternative. We should extrapolate from the behaviour of the Romans.
Roman provinces (the first was Sicily, 241 bc) were ultimately controlled by military rather than economic force.
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