The Euro: Tenth Anniversary: Euro Weighs-In

The history of the European Union has been of increasing political and economic integration and enlargement, punctuated by periods when these processes have stalled. The single currency, launched operationally on January 1, 1999 was designed, in part, to accelerate the historic impulse towards ever closer union. But, today, the EU is facing an existential question. How big is the risk that the worst systemic global financial and economic crisis since the 1930s will, for the first time, set in motion negative forces which could power the disintegration of the Union, weakening the single currency and dividing member states?