Anniversary: 10 years of Single European Currency

Europeans were the first to invent collective money and mint the first coin in German Hansa city by the end of 14 century. Five centuries later they started to set up a lot of monetary unions: Austro-Hungarian, Scandinavian, Latin, further on – European union of payment, “currency snake in a tunnel”, European currency system, and finally – Economic ad Monetary Union (EMU).

Despite of the fact that historic and economic logic was suggesting long time ago to set up finally one single firm economic area with its currency and a single Pan-European financial body, that is the best and beneficial business-decision (European countries are trade partners of each other, their economics are based on import-export relations with each other, and exchange rates always cause difficulties), but it came true only few years ago.

“ECU”, a synthetic currency existed for few years and was created using exchange rates of European economics with its currency rate on December 31, 1998, transformed on January 1, 1999, into a single “euro” currency that united 11 European states – Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland and France – into the most powerful economic and political standing behind it block ever.

There are about 16 countries in eurozone now, and most of them are members of the European Union. With time ‘euro’ became not simply the biggest financial experiment in a human history, but more a peculiar strength test for the economics. Today “the test” celebrates its 10th anniversary that happened to be in 2009.

On the photos you find the most important EU financial center and the head-quarter city for the European Central Bank – German city of Frankfurt-am-Main. European Central Bank building has a small “?(c)afe” inside where you can not only drink tasty coffee, but discover the whole “euro” history, and buy as a souvenir a “brick” of compacted cut on pieces German currency (DM).

To see all photos click here.