What is absolutely extraordinary is when I compare where we are now, after eight years and several months, with what was anticipated nine or ten years ago. I negotiated the Maastricht Treaty, together with Horst Köhler [German president].
I was explaining in New York and London what we were doing and the reasons we were doing it in, I would say, circles that ten years ago were quite sceptical. Even nine years ago! New York convinced itself that we would really set up the euro only at the end of the first quarter of 1998.