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"The euro is born. Long live
the euro!" declared Le
Monde Tuesday, celebrating the birth in Brussels over the weekend of the
single European currency. The Paris newspaper led its front page with the
headline "Euro: outrage in Germany," referring to the "violent
attacks" in the German press against the compromise agreed between Germany and
France over the presidency of the new European Central Bank, which will manage
the euro. Dutch central banker Wim Duisenberg, the candidate supported by all
European Union members except France, will "voluntarily" serve only half of his
statutory eight year term and will then be replaced by the governor of the Bank
of France, Jean-Claude Trichet.
This
compromise, held by many critics to be in contravention of the terms in the
Maastricht Treaty for establishing the single currency, was described in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung as "a shadow over monetary union" and in the German business
newspaper Handelsblatt as horse-trading that would encourage the
Euroskeptics in Germany. The popular Bild Zeitung called the birth of the euro in these circumstances
"a forceps delivery."
But like the German newspaper Die Welt, which titled its editorial "An Historic Day,"
Le Monde said the compromise shouldn't overshadow history. "Never mind
that it has humiliated the man without whom the euro wouldn't have seen the
light of day, Chancellor Helmut Kohl." "Never mind that it has shaken one of
the last great European leaders ... that it has given arguments to his social
democrat opponents only a few months from the September elections. ... That's
everyday Europe. The most important, the essential, the historic thing is the
creation of the euro."
The
Italian press was seized with euro excitement. La Repubblica of Rome led
Tuesday with news of a stock-exchange boom across Europe, under the headline
"Euphoria in the markets," and reported from London that the new currency had
already been given a market value of $1.124. It also carried an article from
Brussels predicting--despite U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's statements
to the contrary--that the euro would threaten the primacy of "the king dollar."
Reporting lack of enthusiasm from the Vatican, La Repubblica said church
officials feared it would necessitate modifications to the concordat governing
relations between Italy and the Holy See. Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della
Sera of Milan, pointed out in a front-page comment that Rome was the only
city in Europe to organize a municipal party to celebrate the birth of the
euro.
In Britain, which has excluded itself from the
single European currency for the time being, the main headlines Tuesday were
about the unsuccessful Middle East peace talks in London, though the liberal
Guardian's main
editorial was an attack on France for its insistence that a
Frenchman should run the new European Central Bank. "No one comes out of it
well, least of all Jacques Chirac, President of France who, like a bullyboy in
the playground, picked up the ball and refused to play on until everyone agreed
to his terms," it said.
The conservative Daily
Telegraph said
in an editorial that the pressure was not on Benjamin Netanyahu
to reach an accommodation but on Yasser Arafat to convince Netanyahu that "he
would be a dependable neighbour" and guarantee Israel's safety. As the talks
move to Washington next week, the Telegraph said only the United States
was in a position to mediate a final deal. "[I]ts subsidies throughout the
region give it a clout that Europe lacks and, unlike the EU, it is regarded as
tough on terrorism, the issue on which the process will ultimately stand or
fall," the editorial concluded.
