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: introducing free movement of capital between member states, increasing cooperation between states and their central banks, and gradually introducing a single currency and monetary policy. The treaty also laid out how new member states could join the union and set criteria for using the currency, like having stable levels of public debt and inflation. How the currency got its name
The legal framework for a common currency had been built. But the specifics of the currency itself still needed to be hashed out—including what to call it. “ The name of the single currency must be the same in all the official languages of the European Union, taking into account the existence of different alphabets; it must be simple and symbolize Europe,” the European Council wrote in 1995. Enter Germain Pirlot, a Belgian professor and esperantist who thought that the currency should reflect the people who would use it. He wrote to the commission’s president in 1995 suggesting the name “euro.” In 1995, it became the official name of the currency, and the European Council chose the symbol €. The symbol "was inspired by the Greek letter epsilon (Є), a reference to the cradle of European civilization,” the commission writes. “