Introduction
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the European project. Almost half a century ago, European nations began exploring the idea of a single currency: the Euro—the single currency shared by nineteen European nations. However, in giving up their national currencies, Eurozone members lost important policy levers. This basic flaw creates acute difficulties as countries that share the currency diverge from each other. Moreover, it is on the nature of the single currency that once member economies begin to diverge from each other, the common interest rate will cause the divergence to increase. Thus, although they described the project in grand terms, Europeans set about creating an “incomplete monetary union,” one that had a common monetary policy but lacked the fiscal safeguards to dampen booms and recessions. Within this incomplete structure, conflicts on the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy were bound to rise.