In a recent poll by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, some 65% of German believe they would be better off if the country had not adopted the euro. The same poll revealed that just 36% of French citizens think France should have stayed with the French franc.
When the euro came into existence in the late 1990s, Germany’s deutschmark was a very strong currency. The strength of the currency made German products quite expensive to import.
What the Germans have forgotten — or perhaps didn’t know in the first place — is that the European Central Bank, which was created to control the euro, made huge low-interest loans to other eurozone members like Greece and Portugal that enabled the citizens of those countries to purchase all those German-made goods. That ended a severe recession in Germany and put the country back on a sound economic footing. The cheap money infusion didn’t work out so well for Greece and Portugal though.
Most Germans, however, believe in the European Union. Some 69% of Germans like the EU, compared with 56% of the French and 59% of the Poles.
Paul Ausick
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