History of the euro
The euro came into existence on 1 January 1999, although it had been a goal of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors since the 1960s. After tough negotiations, the Maastricht Treaty entered into force in 1993 with the goal of creating an economic and monetary union (EMU) by 1999 for all EU states except the UK and Denmark (even though Denmark has a fixed exchange rate policy with the euro). The currency was formed virtually in 1999; notes and coins began to circulate in 2002. It rapidly took over from the former national currencies and slowly expanded behind the rest of the EU. In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty finalised its political authority, the Eurogroup, alongside the European Central Bank. The first ideas of an economic and monetary union in Europe were raised well before establishing the European Communities. For example, as earlier on as the League of Nations, Gustav Stresemann had enquired in 1929 for a European currency against the background of an increased economic division due to a number of new nation states in Europe after World War I. At this time memories of the Latin Monetary Union involving principally France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland and which, for practical purposes, had disintegrated following the First World War, figured prominently in the minds of policy makers. A first attempt to create an economic and monetary union between the members of the European Economic Community (EEC) arrived with an initiative by the European Commission in 1969, which set out the need for "greater co-ordination of economic policies and monetary cooperation". This was followed up at a meeting of the European Council at The Hague in December 1969. The European Council tasked Pierre Werner, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, with finding a way to reduce currency exchange rate volatility. His report was published in October 1970 and recommended centralisation of the national macroeconomic policies entailing "the total and irreversible fixing of parity rates and the complete liberation of movements of capital".
