Eurozone Currency Issues

The issues are more EMU (Eurozone) than the EU?

Because they don't have a surplus? The issue is multiple drastically different economies trying to use the same currency. All the reasons you try to appreciate or depreciate your currency are not available to most EU countries.

Half the countries in the EU don't use the Euro. Many economists recommend against a currency union without possibility of fiscal transfers to deal with asymmetric shocks, predicting what happened in the years after 2008.

I understand the sentiment, but you're overlooking one big factor.In a true free market scenario with freely floating currencies, currencies in countries like Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece would have devalued. Germany's currency would have strengthened. This would have made German exports (to other EU countries) much less competitive than they currently are.However, the Euro tightly integrates these other countries with Germany and makes it very difficult for them to revive their economies

The monetary union is voluntary and some European nations used it to load up on cheap debt that they are now asking the Germans to help pay down. Using a common currency always means that interest rates and exchange rates will not be equally appropriate for everybody. It's the same in the US.

The currency is never the problem. Not having goods/services which are on par with other member states prevents internal trade. Not being able to devalue your currency prevents external trade. That creates debt which Germany and France buys and whoopdy doo, poverty and extremism.The expansion of the euro into countries which aren't realistic trading partners is the problem but Germany and France love it, it means more long term wealth for them.

The Euro is the currency of a wide range of fiscally independent countries which have had very different economic developments during the time since they adopted the Euro; its value is perhaps an adequate average of those countries, but nevertheless it is at the same time under-valued in Germany as it is over-valued in Spain.

You do know that a big part of EU isn’t in the Euro zone? The problem with the Euro is that countries can’t devalue their currency to become competitive after any bubble. So Greek, Spain etc. have to suffer much more than necessary. Not only Southern European countries that some argue had themselves to blame, but also countries like Finland. Germany who’s goods are cheaper on the global market is of course happy.

Top economists have criticized the EU because of this (a currency union without a federal budget), but since this is HN, of course we have many many more experts, who can accurately (in their heads) dismiss the whole branch as stupid.In the US there's agreements so poor states get federal money, but in the EU if a country needs to be bailed out, 28 or so national parliaments have to discuss it and come to 1 agreement.Meanwhile the benefit of your own currency is that it helps the econ

The only country which benefited from the Euro is Germany and they had the audacity to not only refuse the fiscal policies and transfers which might have made that fair but actually undermine the most affected countries like Greece even more. I personally lost all hope for the union after the debt crisis and considering the state of politics and denial of reality in the north of Europe, I really wish we would just leave too. I’m sad we lost the open border with the UK however, genuinely love the