After two world wars in less than a century, many people sought the means to prevent such devastation from happening again. One idea put forward by a French civil servant Jean Monet and taken up by France's foreign minister at the time, Robert Schumann, was to pool the industries that were seen as the engines of war, coal and steel. In 1951, six countries, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, signed the Treaty of Paris, creating the European coal and steel community, governed by the first supernational body, the high authority. Europe's leaders wanted to go further, so on 25th March 1957, they signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the EEC, the European Economic Community and Euro-TOM, the European Atomic Energy Community. In 1968, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg Pierre Werner proposed a single currency. The Werner Report, published in 1970, called for step-by-step progress towards monetary union within 10 years. But a year later the USD valued the dollar. Then there was an oil crisis and the Werner Plan was shelved. So instead of a monetary union, some countries in Europe introduced what was called the currency snake, which set limits on exchange rate fluctuations, both against a number of European currencies and against the dollar. Between its creation in 1972 and its demise seven years later, the snakes saw a lot of exchange rate adjustments and a veritable revolving door of countries, joining, leaving and then rejoining again. In 1979, the push for economic and monetary union was revived. The European monetary system was born and the European currency unit or ECU was created. The ECU, however, was only a virtual currency, a mere unit of account. Within the European monetary system, the member states agreed to keep their currencies within a fluctuation band of 2.25%, around a central reference rate. This was the start of the exchange rate mechanism. The governments of the member states didn't always find it easy. There were 37 currency realignments between 1979 and 1987. In 1986, the member states signed the Single European Act, which marked the first substantial changes to the Treaty of Rome. The objective of the Single Act was to create a true internal market by 1993, based on the free circulation of goods, people, services and capital, with no non-tariff barriers. In 1988, the then president of the European Commission, Jacques De Law, was appointed to chair a committee whose findings were to become the basis of the Maastricht Treaty. The De Law report envisaged a three-stage progression towards economic and monetary union. The stage 1 focused on increasing the cooperation among central banks and was adopted as of 1 July 1990, when the movement of capital in the European community was liberalized completely. The Treaty on European Union was then signed in Maastricht on 7 February 1992. It laid out the framework and the further steps for achieving economic and monetary union and making it work. The Treaty established 1994 as the beginning of stage 2. This phase would bring about economic convergence, as well as the institutions and procedures needed to achieve it. The Treaty set out the convergence criteria, which member states had to fulfill in order to be considered ready for the adoption of the single currency. Stage 2 saw the creation of the European Monetary Institute, which began its work in Frankfurt on 1 January 1994. The EMI carried out all the preparatory work necessary for the ECB to assume its responsibility for monetary policy. In May 1998, EU leaders and finance ministers met in Brussels to decide which states had reached a sufficient degree of convergence and could therefore participate in the Monetary Union. They also appointed the first president of the ECB, Willem Doysenberg and the other members of the first executive board. The ECB was established on 1 June 1998, replacing the EMI and taking over its Frankfurt offices. Together with all the national central banks of the member states of the European Union, the ECB came to form the European system of central banks. On the night of 31 December 1998, the euro was born and the conversion rates of the currencies participating in it became irrevocably fixed. Stage 3 began on 1 January 1999, when the single currency was launched and authority over monetary policy was transferred from national central banks to the governing council of the EU. The European central bank. Three years later on 1 January 2002, the new banknotes and coins were introduced amid widespread celebrations. People queued at cash dispensers to be among the first to have the new currency in their pockets. For three years, the euro had been the official currency for banks, businesses and the financial markets. But now it belonged to everyone.