Abstract

This paper shows the reasons why the European institution created the common currency, the endogenous factors (as the countries members' resistance to the monetary integration) and the exogenous ones (the economic and financial crisis that arrived during the period under analysis) that brought about the long delay of the birth of the Euro. During the debate about the birth of the common currency in the 1960s and 1970s, all the most important characteristics of the future Euro were defined. Before its birth (considered fundamental for the political, economic and social integration of Western Europe), some economists and bankers put in evidence what was necessary (and what had to be avoided) in order to allow the new common currency to give a real advantage to European citizens and enterprises. They underlined that the success of the Euro (and of all the EU members) asked for a strong political and economic integration: they in fact declared that «Europe is realized by a common currency, or it will never be realized» and that monetary integration was necessary for the existence of the European Institution. So the failure of the EMU will not depend on the Euro: the ones who are really responsibleare politicians and economists who continue to ignore the suggestions and risks indicated in the past, and so they do not allow the enlargement of the European institutions' powers and more particularly those of the ECB.