The European Central Bank (ECB) celebrates its 10th anniversary on Sunday June 1st.
On Thursday a special edition of the ECB’s Monthly Bulletin to mark the anniversary was published.
The edition looks back at the ECB’s work and achievements over the past ten years. It also considers the challenges that the ECB and the euro area face as they enter their second decade.
In the Foreword to this Monthly Bulletin, Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, says: “For nearly ten years, price stability has been broadly achieved despite the fact that strong global commodity price increases – on which monetary policy has no direct influence – have affected Europe and the rest of the world, leading to an average inflation rate that has been slightly above 2% since the launch of the euro. Stable prices are essential.”
The ECB came into being on 1 June 1998 and the euro was launched on 1 January 1999. This gave it six months to prepare for the challenging and unprecedented tasks of
- replacing the currencies of a group of sovereign states with the “single currency”, and
- devising a monetary policy for the nascent euro area.
Credit for the inspiration and vision in turning the inconceivable proposition of replacing the principal currencies in Europe with one single currency, goes to the late French President François Mitterrand, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Jacques Delors, the 8th President of the European Commission.
Contrast the achievement of these three giants, with the maelstrom of scaremongering and pettiness, of the current Irish referendum campaign on the EU's Lisbon Reform Treaty.
Apart from the usual no-to-everything campaigners and other seekers of utopian perfection, the most cynical group must be the Irish Farmers' Association. It's not even a case of eaten bread being soon forgotten. Most Irish farmers still get at least 70% of their income via the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.
"Between euro area countries, there is now more trade in goods and services, greater financial integration ... and increasing foreign direct investment and cross-border portfolio holdings, as well as sustained job creation," the ECB said in the special monthly bulletin devoted to its first decade in existence.
Since the launch of the euro, the eurozone has generated 15.7 million new jobs - one million more than the United States over the period - and unemployment is at its lowest level since the early 1980s, in part owing to reforms needed to join the 15-nation bloc.
"In all of the eurozone, and notably in France, the unemployment rate is the lowest in a quarter of a century. I don't say the euro created all these jobs, but I say that with the euro, these jobs have been created," Trichet said.
In March, US investment bank Goldman Sachs estimated that at the euro's current exchange rate against the dollar, eurozone annual output "exceeded that of the United States."
FINFACTS REPORTS:
Lisbon Treaty: Campaigning for democratic accountability and transparency in Brussels but why not try it in Dublin first?
Meath farm sells for €13.5 million; Irish farm land most expensive in Europe
Ireland's 40-year bonanza of foreign aid from the European Union will amount to €41 billion by the time we become a net contributor in 2013
Irish EU Sceptics and the Lisbon Treaty : For most of the period since the end of the Second World War, the people of Eastern Europe lived under the jackboot of communism. People were shot dead if they tried to leave their countries without official authorisation.
Eaten bread is soon forgotten and in the years that German taxpayers in particular provided funding for Irish agriculture and infrastructure investment, it was inconceivable that for example Poland would in the not too distant future, become a member of what was then known as the European Economic Community.
There can be no agreement by 27 countries that is akin to a utopia.
If there is a heaven, then there may be perfection but human progress involves compromise unless it's the old law of the jungle that applies......
