Euro or pound
1179 mots
5 pages
“Should the UK adopt the Euro as its currency”?The issue needs to be faced, of course, from different points of view. As for the citizen’s point of view, there are two sides that deserve careful consideration: the “domestic” and the “out of the border” point of views.
As for the domestic point of view, it cannot be denied that, practically in all of the European countries (surely in Italy, France, Spain and Germany), the introduction of the Euro caused, in general, a sensible rise in prices.
That was basically linked to the currency conversion rates fixed at that time. In Germany, let’s assume, the Deutschmark was exchanged at nearly 0,50 Euro, and exactly the same happened in Italy, where the reference unit could be identified in 1000 liras. New consumer prices in Euro were fixed tending to consider as a new unit the Euro and not simply converting the price in Euro, considering the original price in the old currency. So that, the original consumer prices were converted in a new unit that was nearly equal to the double of the previous unit of reference (two Deutschmarks or 2000 Italian liras). In other words, the introduction of the new currency was intended, by most of the trade operators, as a lucrative way to convert 1000 liras in one Euro (and not in nearly 0,50 Euro), one Deutschmark in one Euro (and not in nearly 50 Eurocents) somewhat like a process tending to halve the spending power of all citizens. By and large, the same process occurred in France and Spain.
In the UK, on the contrary, despite the Pound is currently quoted at its lowest value since, at least, a decade (allegedly because of the extremely low interest rate and because of the political forces seem to be comfortable with this trend), the Sterling is quoted at a higher value than the Euro (currently 0,90 circa). If the same process previously occurred in the other European countries should take place in the UK too (1 Deutschmark = 1 Euro; 1000 Italian liras = 1 Euro) the spending