to save the euro. The optimists tend to attribute continued scepticism to a poor understanding of the politics or to a refusal to acknowledge the signifi cance of the steps already taken. In fact, those who claim that politics will come to the rescue irrespective of how bad the economics get
are guilty of complacency. There is a gulf between the political objectives that member-states were pursuing when they joined the euro and where they find themselves now. This is the principal reason why their commitment to rectifying the fl aws of the euro is so weak.
For the French, the euro was a way of regaining some control over monetary policy from the
Bundesbank and of maintaining economic and political parity with a newly united Germany.
There was next to no discussion in France over what a currency union implied in terms of the
country’s economic and social policies, and certainly no sense that by joining the euro France
was eff ectively committing itself to a liberal economic agenda. The French pushed strongly
for a broad euro including Italy and Spain, not out of any commitment to closer EU integration, but in an attempt to further dilute Germany’s hold on the newly-created European Central Bank (ECB).
