According to a recent poll, less than half of Europeans still trust EU. It seems as if the crisis has diverted people from Europe. But things are not as simple as they seem.
Now that Europe's crisis has gripped many agree that monetary union was never a good idea. The introduction of the euro has not been an economic project, but simply political project, is their argument. The goal that should be achieved is different depending on how the confessor: or plugged reunified Germany in the European chain. Or vice versa: Germany wanted the euro, in order to put its European neighbors to the dictates of her.
Both are myths, both wrong, says Harold James, British historian at Princeton University in the U.S., who has studied the long process of euro adoption. James sees the euro in response to strong fluctuations of the exchange rate since the 1970s.
Then he thought: "If the world can not be stabilized, then at least be stable Europe, with an independent central bank," says James DW. "This has been the precondition for the idea of stability."
The idea of stability was reflected in the Maastricht criteria, which define clear limits to the budget deficit and government debt of the euro countries. However, many countries did not respect it, even Germany and France.
At the same time the European Commission put forward economic union. The goal has been, and is, in all countries of the euro to apply the same rules. "In the domestic market it is perfectly reasonable to create equal conditions for all," says Werner Abelshauser DW, economic historian at the University of Bielefeldit. "But this is in contradiction with the fact that economic cultures in Europe are different. Namely, what is good for some, is somehow bad for others."
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