1. Introduction: revisiting the euro experiment
We live through one of the greatest monetary experiments of all times. The member states of the European monetary union are much more diverse in terms of income, size and political-economic structure than those of any other contemporary monetary union. The members of the euro area joined voluntarily. In monetary matters, they let themselves now be ruled and monitored by a supranational bureaucracy that has neither a budget to incentivise them nor the means of force to coerce them. The euro is a money in which the issuing central bank is completely "divorced" from any tax-transfer state.1
