Euro

The Euro is one of the most important currencies in the world, created for a culture that is opened to changes and with the objective of achieving the union between the different Member States of theEuropean Union.
To tackle this question it is first needed to introduce the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), also called eurozone. It represents a major step in the integration of EUeconomies; an economic integration brings the benefits of greater size, internal efficiency and robustness to the EU economy as a whole and to the economies of the individual Member States. It was formed inthree stages; the first stage began on 1 July 1990 and involved complete freedom for capital transactions, increased cooperation between central banks and improvement of economic convergence, theMaastricht Treaty (1992) was signed in this stage; the second stage began on 1 January 1994 and it supposed the establishing of the European Monetary Institute (EMI), the increased coordination in monetarypolicies, the independence of national central banks and the set of rules to curb national budget deficits; and it was in the third stage where the euro was born. This stage also brought the creationof the European Central Bank (ECB), the entry into effect of the intra-EU exchange rate mechanism and the entry into force of the Stability and Growth Pact.
In practical terms, EMU means:coordination of economic policy-making between Member States, coordination of fiscal policies, an independent monetary policy run by the European Central Bank (ECB), and finally, as mentioned above, the singlecurrency and the euro area (European Comission, 2010).
The euro was launched on 1 January 1999 but for the first three years it was an invisible currency, only used for accounting purposes. Since 1January 2002 the Euro has been the official currency in which individual citizens are paid and denoted the price of all goods, services and labour across the whole EMU zone. (Baimbridge et al.,...