A Quote by Gerhard Schroder

The euro is a sickly premature infant, the result of an over-hasty monetary union.

Gerhard Schroder

Quote Topics

Euro Hasty Infant Monetary Over Premature Result Union

Quote Author

Gerhard Schroder
German - Statesman
Born: April 7, 1944

There is a proposal to divide the currency zone into a north and a south euro. There is also the idea of setting up a core monetary union in the middle of Europe. I disapprove of these debates. Instead, we should devote all of our efforts to supplementing the monetary union with a political union.

Jean-Claude Juncker

We already have a federation. The 11, soon to be 12, member States adopting the euro have already given up part of their sovereignty, monetary sovereignty, and formed a monetary union, and that is the first step towards a federation.

Joschka Fischer

Europe is sort of like the Soviet Union in the '30s and '40s. There was an argument, is it reformable or not? There is a feeling, and I think it's correct, that the European Union, the eurozone, and the euro, is not reformable, as a result of the Lisbon treaties and the other treaties that have created the euro. Europe has to be taken apart in order to be put together not on a right-wing, neoliberal basis, but on a more social basis.

Michael Hudson

For a small open economy that trades mostly with the euro zone it makes absolute sense to be part of the currency union. Our currency has already pegged to the euro since 2002. We don't have an independent monetary policy. We are regulated by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, but we are not able to reap all the profits. Our businesses want to save the transaction costs.

Dalia Grybauskaite

Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.

Austan Goolsbee

The euro is a vital issue for Germany. There is no other country that derives as much benefit from the common domestic market and the monetary union as Germany.

Peer Steinbruck

Two decisions have damaged the stability both of the euro and of Europe: the premature admission of Greece to the euro area and the breach and subsequent weakening of the stability and growth pact.

Helmut Kohl

Britain is not part of the single currency. That is a decision we have taken, a voluntary decision of this country, but as a result are part of a European Union 19 of whose members are rapidly integrating, creating political, fiscal, monetary, economic union to make their currency work. And that is increasingly rubbing up against the operation.

George Osborne

Our membership of the euro is a guarantee of monetary stability and creates the right conditions for sustainable growth. Our membership of the euro is the only choice.

Lucas Papademos

Germans tend to forget now that the euro was largely a Franco-German creation. No country has benefited more from the euro than Germany, both politically and economically. Therefore what has happened as a result of the introduction of the euro is largely Germany's its responsibility.

George Soros

Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build on this, and make the euro more than a currency and Europe more than a territory... In the next six months, we will talk a lot about political union, and rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps forward.

Laurent Fabius

I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I'm trying to be more nuanced and realistic. I think there has to be a serious examination of the shortcomings of the Euro structure. Euro central institutions, whether it be fiscal policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, are simply not as robust as they are in a currency that has a national government behind it.

Stephen Harper

We link our future to the euro, to the euro zone, and to the European Union while being the nearest neighbor of the United Kingdom with, obviously, a common travel area and a very close working relationship with the U.K.

Enda Kenny

Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.

Winston Churchill

The fact that we're going through a crisis is an opportunity for Europe to be more coordinated and more integrated. We're actually talking about a European Monetary Fund or euro bonds, about guarantees for countries, about economic governance in the European Union. That shows the strength of Europe.