Currency Rates Today

The History of the Euro

World Currency Rates Today : the History of the Euro

Euro is currently the prime currency today of 16 out of the 27 members of the European Union and the official currency of the euro-zone that consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. A currency used by 327 million Europeans everyday, Euro is known to be the second largest reserve currency and also the second largest traded currency rates today after U.S Dollar.

Euro rates came into establishment in the year 1992 in the Maastricht Treaty and the design of the Euro sign was claimed to be made by Arthur Eisenmenger. The rates of the Euro at different points of time were determined by the European Union taking the foreign market rates at that time. The power of Euro was actually increased with the start of the year 1999 when Euro was started to be used in non-physical forms such as banking and electronic transfers. Later, on 1 January 2002, new coins and notes of euro started hitting the market when Euro had replaced all the other local national currencies and by the end of 2002, Euro had become the prime currency of 12 European states. Ever since then, many economists have placed Euro as one of the fastest growing currencies in the world in a very short span of time. This is evident from the facts and figures in the reserve currency area. The share of the Euro currency in the reserve currency sector was 17.9% in 1999 and the same has risen to a whooping 26.5% in 2008. The currency is rated less in already developed countries but has an overweight in the developing economies.

With the increasing power of Euro in no time, many countries outside the European Union as well have directly pegged to the euro. The benefit that the countries have had with this move is the cutting down on the cost of the exchanging currency. The history of the Euro is still evolving and many more countries have already contracted to adopt Euro as their main trading currency. The list of the upcoming countries adopting Euro as their currency include Estonia (slated for 2011), Bulgaria, Latvia, and Poland (slated for 2012), Lithuania (slated for 2013), Romania (slated for 2014) and Czech Republic (slated for 2015).

With so much history created in the past one decade or so, the history of Euro is embarked in bigger and thicker words in the book of history when it comes to knowing the power of currencies.