Mind your tongues

Date: 11/09/1997

T HIS week has seen another fevered bout of speculation about whether or not the single currency will be launched, as planned, in January 1999.

The latest war of words was sparked by Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer's comment that he could not agree with the notion that “if the euro was delayed, the sky over Europe would crash down”. Tietmeyer later insisted that this should not be interpreted as a call for postponement, but that did nothing to calm the turbulent waters stirred up by his original remark.

As the speculation mounted, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel stepped into the fray, urging “everyone who carries responsibility in Germany” to consider his or her words on the euro “particularly carefully” - although he was quick to stress that his remarks were not specifically aimed at any one individual. Commission President Jacques Santer went even further, warning that what he called the “diatribe of doubt” about the project could only serve to frighten people and insisting that the Union had reached “the irreversible point” on the road to EMU.

Whether Santer is right in his insistence that the single currency will be launched on 1 January 1999 in accordance with the timetable laid down by the Maastricht Treaty or not remains to be seen. But his warning that the constant speculation about whether the euro brides will be jilted at the altar or form the indissoluble union which so many of them are striving for is undermining public confidence in the project is undoubtedly correct.

At a time when every utterance by government ministers or leading bankers on the subject is flashed up on financial news agency screens across the globe and closely analysed for the merest hint of deviation from the official line, the public could be forgiven for losing patience with its leaders.

The answers to the key questions which are constantly asked - will it go ahead on time and, if so, which countries will be in the first wave of euro members - will be known soon enough. Decision day is now only months away and the inevitable jockeying for position before the starting gun is fired will soon give way to hard bargaining behind closed doors. If the public is to have confidence in the outcome of that debate, leading political and banking figures will indeed have to choose their words carefully.

EU finance ministers would do well to heed Kinkel and Santer's words of warning when they gather for their informal meeting in the Luxembourg town of Mondorf this weekend.