Jean-Jacques Rosa is the Dean of the MBA program at the Inst. of Political Studies, Paris, where he has taught since 1978.

Originally published by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1998. Translated from French by Andrea Secara.

Who among Europeans could be against Europe? In all the world, it is the continent where the standard of living is highest, where the culture is the oldest and at the same time the richest in diversity, where the way of life is most pleasant, and where democracy is the most generally widespread.

But if Europeans are so happy with their continent, what kind of Europe do they want for the future? Starting with the formation of the common market at the end of the Fifties, intended to restore the free exchange of goods, services, men and capital after the wave of protectionism and isolationism of the depression years and the war, the European leadership elites have gone on to erecting a plan for a monetary and thus a political Europe, that of a very great State and a single State. Otherwise, they suggest, we will be relegated to decline and impotence and finally to obliteration. Not to want Europe unified, statist and monetarist, would be not to want Europe, as if the latter could admit only that one definition, only that one design. A typical example of politically correct thinking.

The author shows that the idea of a single currency and Very Great State belong in the domain of administrative Utopia.

Does Europe still have a choice? Do we still have a choice? The Euro is already being adopted by governments, the media, and sometimes even by European citizens. They promise us less unemployment and more freedom. But are we so...

Does Europe still have a choice? Do we still have a choice? The Euro is already being adopted by governments, the media, and sometimes even by European citizens. They promise us less unemployment and more freedom. But are we so certain of the outcome?

It was high time for an economist, independent minded and free from special interests, to sound the alarm. Jean-Jacques Rosa denounces the creation of the European single currency as the most serious error made since the deflationist policy of the 1920s, which brought turned the 1929 stock market crash into a decade of tragedy. In coming to this judgement, Jean-Jacques Rosa applies logic, the truths of everyday existence, human experience, and statistical proof. Isn't the Euro, then, really just the political desire to melt the European nations into one state? But wouldn't the right size for today's nations be infinitely more modest?

Against the trend of intellectual conformity, the timidity of the élites, and the knee-jerk approbation of Franco-German integration, Jean-Jacques Rosa, often polemical, suggests it's time we exited from this impasse -- from our European error.