Despite some remaining feuding and recrimination, leaders from all but 4 of the 15 nations in the European Union are expected to approve final plans next weekend for the introduction of a single European currency on Jan. 1. Financial institutions and a few big companies will shift in 1999 to euro-based electronic transactions, although the actual bills and coins will not be in general use until 2002. But in a real sense, the new order begins in Brussels next week, because European leaders are expected to spell out the exchange rates at which their individual currencies will be locked together. As a practical matter, their countries will immediately subordinate individual monetary policies in favor of a common European policy. Most economists say the euro's long-term prospects are better than they dared imagine a few years ago.
Inflation is low.
Growth is accelerating across the Continent. And a world barometer for financial credibility, the currency markets, increasingly behave as if the euro were already a fact of life. We have better airplanes as a result of competition between Airbus and Boeing, and the euro will give us better reserve currencies. Never before has a group of countries tried to introduce a common currency on such a scale without also forming a political union. Nor have political leaders worked together for so long to overcome historical divisions born of language barriers, cultural differences and war.