The mirage of a global euro

ONE of the great claims made for the euro was that it would rival the US dollar as a second global reserve currency. These hopes have failed to materialise. The euro's importance in global reserves and financial markets today is about the same as it was two decades ago, when it replaced the Deutsche mark and 10 other national currencies.

But hope dies last, and in this spirit, the European Commission recently published a communication titled "Towards a stronger international role of the euro" (sic). The commission, like most European policy-makers, takes it as given that the eurozone would benefit if the euro played a more global role, but this is not necessarily true.

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