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: Starting in 2013, a refreshed series of banknotes has been sent into circulation. It features an updated map of Europe and better safety features. The rollout was relatively smooth, despite the refusal of some countries, like the United Nations and Denmark, to use the currency and strikes by disgruntled bankers in both France and Italy. Meanwhile, reported CBS News, people exchanged hoards of money they had been hiding for years and bestowed piles of old money on churches as offerings to offload their old coins. The public had to be taught not just to recognize the new currency, but to determine whether the coins and banknotes were counterfeit and figure out what it was worth compared to their old currency. “As soon as I switched to the single currency, I converted all my money into euros and tried to think only in that currency,” said Germain Pirlot, the professor who suggested the currency’s name, in 2007. He called the conversion “a simple gymnastics of the mind” and encouraged his fellow Belgians to think in euros, not francs, abandoning the complicated math that went into understanding how much the currency might be worth. Will the euro survive? The euro was supposed to usher in a new age of economic stability, but it has had its share of ups and downs. Beginning in 2009, the world began to realize that Greece, a eurozone member, might default on its debt.