The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.
I am imprinted with the whole sense of European history, especially German history, going back to World War I, which really destroyed all the old values and culture. My grandparents had been reasonably well-off but they became quite poor, living in an attic apartment.
Europe must dissipate any doubts over the euro, affirm that the euro is an irreversible project and act in consequence.
I was sure we would never see the adoption of the Euro. Countries giving up their currencies for a common tender was, it seemed to me, completely out of tune with currency being a carrier of people's cultural identity, celebrating national heroes and events, as it had been for hundreds of years.
Why am I such a Euro-enthusiast? Because I knew it was an anchor of democracy.
I described the euro as a burning building with no exits and so it has proved for some of the countries in it.
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present.
I loved Europe so much.
We must stress that the euro has been beneficial to the European Union because, otherwise, in this context of international turmoil, every country would have to devalue their currencies.
The euro is our common fate, and Europe is our common future.