Title: The Euro: How a Common Currency Helped Europe Achieve Peace - HISTORY
Headings: The Euro: How a Common Currency Helped Europe Achieve Peace
The Euro: How a Common Currency Helped Europe Achieve Peace
A vision of peace led to the first economic union in Europe
Economic volatility made currency reform more important than ever
It took decades for a plan to emerge
How the currency got its name
A high-minded design—and an orderly rollout
Will the euro survive?
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Content: So European nations decided to band together not just to stabilize their economies, but minimize the chance of another devastating war. In 1951, the treaty established the European Coal and Steel Community, which united steel and coal production in France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Since France and Germany had long been enemies, it was thought that pooling the production of two materials essential to waging war would essentially make fighting one another impossible. It also created a common market for those commodities, kicking off the slow movement toward a common currency that would follow over the next half-century. In 1957, the Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community, a common market which gradually eliminated customs and other trade barriers between the six nations. In 1967, both groups merged with the European Atomic Energy Committee to form the Commission of the European Communities, which was joined by other European nations throughout the years. Economic volatility made currency reform more important than ever
Europe was peaceful, and the currency of its various nations stable, for now. Common market countries grew more prosperous over the 1950s and early 1960. But the late 1960s threatened that newfound prosperity when international currency began to experience large swings in value. The EEC created a working group to try to figure out if it was viable to unite economically and monetarily, and in 1970 the Werner Report, named after the group’s chair, Luxembourg’s prime minister Pierre Werner, recommended that Europe adopt a single currency within a decade.