Euro

{{sources needed}}{{cquote|Europe makes a union, so now they can all use the same money. Except Britain, because they don't feel like it.|||bill wurtz<ref>[https://youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs history of the entire world, i guess]</ref>}}
[[File:Euro coins and banknotes.jpg|right|thumb|165px|Euro coins and banknotes.]]
{{economics}}
A subset of member nations uses the [[European Union]]'s own currency unit, the '''euro''' (Greek '''ευρώ''', Cyrillic '''евро'''){{efn|The Cyrillic romanizes to ''evro'', making it the only translation that doesn't transliterate to ''euro''. Instead, most languages pronounce euro according to their own language rules (so in German, it's pronounced like "oyro", in Spanish it's closer to "ehwdo", etc.)}} (sign: &euro;, code: EUR), hence they are called the eurozone. Originally starting with 11 or 12 members (depending on how Greece, which joined shortly before the implementation of physical currency, is counted), the eurozone has since expanded to 21 countries, with [[Bulgaria]] being the most recent to join in 2026. The euro is also used by some non-EU members, but they are not part of the eurozone and are not represented in the European Central Bank and the Eurogroup. These include the small nations of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and the [[Vatican]], all of which have an agreement with the EU to use Euros as their currency since their old currencies either were or were pegged to currencies that were rendered obsolete by the switch to Euros. Additionally, Montenegro and [[Kosovo]] have adopted the Euro unilaterally since they don't have an alternate currency, but doing this is discouraged by the EU. It's one of the most traded currencies in the world, second only to the [[United States dollar]]. The economic performance of the eurozone has been dire, with its rate of unemployment actually ''soaring'' for years after the [[Great Recession|2007-8 global financial crisis]] while the [[US]] and [[UK]] were slowly climbing out of recession and creating jobs, and even Europe's supposed economic powerhouse, [[Germany]], performing pretty unimpressively. Don't even ask about [[Greece]], the eurozone's internal debt colony. Some have claimed that this somehow counts as evidence against the eurozone's animating economic philosophy of so-called "[[fiscal responsibility]]", which is so fundamental to the eurozone that it has actually been enshrined in treaty.

According to [[Euroscepticism|Eurosceptic]] [[conspiracy]] thinkers, a crisis à la the [[European sovereign debt crisis]] was not only anticipated but actually secretly welcomed by European policymakers{{efn|Insert the individual Eurosceptic's bugbear of choice here, popular candidates include the Commission (and the larger "eurocracy" of civil servants etc.), the European Parliament (to grab more power from the member states and parliaments), German and/or French politicians ([[Angela Merkel]] & [[Emmanuel Macron]]) or any combination of them.}} to allow them to push for a European fiscal union that was and remains unpopular with basically all the national electorates of the EU member states. If one pauses to think this scenario through, this would mean risking a major macro-economic meltdown on a scale not seen since the 1930s in order to get a shot at a fiscal union which might, even if it went through, end up as a union of wrecked economies, i.e. like using a nuclear bomb to remove a wasp's nest from your garage, a [[Hanlon's razor|rather unlikely prospect]].

==Notes==
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==References==
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{{stub|economics}}
[[Category:Currency]]
[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:European Union]]

Categories: Currency, Economics, European Union