One currency for one Europe. The road to the euro

History was made on 1 January 1999 when 11 European Union countries created a monetary union with a single currency, the euro. Euro banknotes and coins entered circulation on 1 January 2002. But the history of Europe's common currency has been a long time in the making and can be charted back to the origins of the European Union itself. Fifty years after the Treaty of Rome laid the foundations of today's EU, the euro is the biggest and most visible success story in the process of European integration.