In the Forword

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About Promeuro ;

Pierre Werner

Honorary Prime Minister of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Member of the Honorary Committee of PROMEURO

“The introduction of the European, single currency, the euro, continues tot be a source of misunderstanding, to raise questions and to cause apprehension, not only among economic experts, but also among ordinary consumers. For many years, PROMEURO remains faithful to its mission to familiarise young people with an innovation which, within a few years, will become part of their daily lives.
The euro is not simply a short-term device. Building on the existing cohesion and solidarity of European Union Member States, it will help to secure the increases in productivity and will develop the economic and financial potential that will support growth, thereby providing new hope to our rising generation of young people. “ Forword of PROMEURO’s first book 1997

Préface

Jean-Claude Juncker

“A single currency : you have to earn it”

Helmut Kohl

“Monetary union is a matter of peace and war”

Pierre Werner

“The euro is not just a futuristic gadget.  Thanks to the cohesion and solidarity of the member countries of the European Union, it will provide that increase in productivity and economic and financial potential which will guarantee healthy growth, giving new hopes to the coming generation.”

1.1.8

Paul-Henri Spaak

"The best Europeans are not those with the brightest or the most magnanimous ideas, who become disheartened when they don't bear fruit.  The good Europeans are those who know how to identify the difficulties and attempt to resolve them, but without ever allowing themselves to be discouraged."

1.2.1.6.

Robert Triffin

"In the absence of reforms leading to the creation of a true international currency, the use of several national currencies as reserve instruments acts as a substitute for the forms which are lacking, and increase still further the instability of the international monetary system."

1.2.1.6.

Robert Schuman

"Europe will not be created in a single act, nor as a complete construction.  It will be created through concrete steps, establishing, first of all,  a solidarity of actions."

1.2.2.3.5

Mark Eyskens

"There may well be states without their own currency, but no durable currency without a state."

1.2.3.1.2

Jacques Rueff

" Europe will have its single currency or it will have no future."

1.2.3.2.1

Jacques Santer

 " Within a period of 12 months, maximum, after the decision to launch the monetary union, all preparations for transition ought to be completed.  On 1 January 1999 at the latest, the Union will have a currency in its own right with a single monetary policy, operated in the European currency.  Nevertheless, as national currencies will continue to be used at the level of retail commerce, the banks will install systems which will permit the combination of access to financial markets in European currency with accounts in the national currency for their clients."

1.2.4.5.

Mettre en allemand

Hans Tietmeyer

 "The entry into the Monetary Union constitutes the foundation of a community of solidarity, and even a commonality of risks, which requires for its long-term survival, the links of a wider political integration."

1.2.4.8.

EUROSTAT

« In order to assure the comparability of  figures employed for measuring the respect for the convergence criteria, Eurostat (the branch of the European Commission which collects and disseminates statistics within the EU) has developed legislation in the relevant domains, with the close cooperation  of the member states, as well as procedures to guarantee the respect for the convergence criteria.  Eurostat does not collect the figures directly from the declarations, but rather from the relevant statistical authorities.

In the specific case of fiscal statistics, the figures employed are those defined within the framework of national accounting, and (more precisely) within the economic system of the integrated accounts, SEC 95.  The fact that the indicators employed for measuring respect of the convergence criteria are defined from a statistical point of view has certainly assisted in assuring reliability.  The development within the member states of  three-monthly accounts for public administration has assisted greatly in improving quality.  Moreover, the reporting of  figures regarding national debt and balance of payments deficit on a statistical basis has obliged member states to maintain a very good level of  internal coordination amongst the groups responsable for various sets of  figures (in the majority of countries of the European Union: the finance ministry, the national central banks, and the national statistical institutions).

On the basis of the statistics supplied by the member states, Eurostat carries out a detailed analysis, including the involvement of delegations to the member states, in order to confirm that the figures supplied conform to accounting principles and are also consistent with the figures supplied by the respective public administration organisations as part of the SEC programme.  In the case of doubt or inconsistency, Eurostat has established a system of consultation with national statisticians."

1.3.1.3.1.

JeanClaude Juncker

“To have a single currency, we must be worth it.”

1.3.1.5.2.

F. Bilger

“A currency (…)  is also (…)  the most  powerful tool of economic policy, which in large measure determines all economic and social evolution . And, in this role, a currency can be, like Aesop’s tongue, the best or the worst of things.”

1.3.1.5.3.

Pierre Werner

“The euro tells us a lot about what is still lacking in the European Structure2”

2.2.3.

Philippe Herzog

“The problem is not coordinating the pursuit of policies of competitive deflation but cooperating in order to institute policies of interdependent development”

2.5.1.

Paul Valery

“little promontory of the Asian Continent”

5.1.7.

(Arrêt du 18 juin 1985, P. Steinhausser c. ville de Biarritz, aff. 197/84, Rec. 1819.)

“le respect de la règle de l’assimilation des ressortissants des autres Etats membres aux nationaux en interdisant toute discrimination fondée sur la nationalité résultant des législations, réglementations ou pratique nationales”.

5.2.1.

(Otto von Gierke,  The development of Political Theory, Translation into English by B. Freyd, New York, Howard Fertig, 1966, page 93-94.  Translation into French by the writer).

“The controversy goes back a long way, to the Middle Ages.  At first it took the form of a purely juridical controversy  ….. as to the nature of the ancient concept of “translatio imperii (“the transfer of power”) from the Roman people to their “Princeps”.  One school of thought championed the theory that it involved a final and irrevocable giving-away of the power, while the other held that was simply a matter of conceding its use and the right to exercise it.   …..  On the one hand, they have reached the conclusion that there is an abdication by the people in favour of the absolute sovereignty of the prince  …..  On the other hand, they have concluded that there is a simple “concessio Imperii”  (concession of power), which is how the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people came into being.” 

5.2.3.

Jacques Delors

« Je connais les mérites, mais aussi les limites, de la méthode des pères fondateurs, une sorte de doux despotisme éclairé. Une méthode saint-simonienne qui consacre la compétence et l’indépendance d’esprit comme principe de légitimité, sans toujours s’assurer à l’avance du consentement des peuples. (…) Cette méthode Monnet se justifiait au début de l’aventure. Mais, n’ayons pas peur de le dire, cette politique – semi-clandestine – n’est plus possible et le moment est venu de rompre avec la méthode des pères fondateurs. » 

6.2.3.

Michel de Montaigne

“I am ashamed to see men steeped in this stupid attitude and shying away from anything unlike what they are used to; They feel they are out of their element when they are away from their villages. Wherever they go, they cleave to their own ways and abominate those of strangers… “

Emmanuel Kant

“When you think, put yourself in the place of any other person”

6.2.4.

Claude Levi-Strauss

“The oldest attitude, and no doubt one with a solid psychological basis, since it tends to resurge in each of us when we are put in an unexpected situation, consists of rejecting outright the cultural, moral, religious, social and aesthetic forms furthest from those with which identify ( ….. )

6.2.5.

Edouard Delruelle

“The role of the press is to give an account of reality in its complexity, which means putting across the plurality of points of view, making plurality an active and living principle

Jean-Jacques JESPERS

“The threats which could hover over pluralism of information are especially linked to the economic policy of media groups, to the orders given to editorial departments by managers and to the conditions of work in the editorial departments”,

6.3.4.

European Charter of Plurilingualism,

“A plurilingual society is made up mostly of individuals capable of expressing themselves in more than one language with various degrees of competence, that’s to say of multilingual or plurilingual individuals, whilst a multilingual society may be made up of monolingual people who don’t know each other’s language” . “European Monitor of Plurilingualism,

6.3.5.

European charter of plurilingualism,

“Active European citizenship as an addition to national citizenship, cannot be imagined without an increase in and a deepening of the exchanges between people and individuals, and the main vector of this is language” .

6.3.7.

European charter of plurilingualism

“Knowledge of one or more foreign languages is naturally an important widening of our field of vision, so it is a necessary additional freedom in the current European context”

6.4.6.

Kenneth Clark

“Civilisation is a disease which is invariably fatal” 

7.2.3.

Jacques Le Goff

“The originality of the Continent of Europe comes firstly from Geography, just as that of a family comes from its members as physical beings, but its character has been forged and determined by history, that’s to say by human beings in the course of time…..  It is a diverse Europe whose common heritages are, in particular, cultural”.

7.3.14.

Alexis de Tocqueville

(“the ambition for power leaves room for the love of well-being, a baser but less dangerous passion”).  “this republican spirit then painlessly affects the country as a whole …..  The public spirit of the Union is in itself somehow only a paradigm of provincial patriotism.  …. The Union is free and happy like a small nation, and glorious and strong like a large one”.

7.3.14.

Jean Monnet

“the direction in which the future Europe would have to look for its way towards a federal community”

7.3.16.

Alexis Curvers

“The unity of Europe was never achieved by politicians owing their importance and fortune to their division  ….. ; it was as if the publicity for zip-fasteners was entrusted to button-manufacturers”.