It is a story that stems from Europe's far-sighted decision after the Second World War to bind its economies together so tightly that our futures would be inseparable, and which, in turn, created the powerful logic underpinning European integration. This engine of integration meant that whenever we faced trials, we did not retreat into division and let what we had built together fail.
Instead, we met those challenges head on and answered them together. And it was this same spirit that made – from the late 1980s onwards – the single currency a necessary next step on our European journey. At that time, both Europe and the world were changing. First, our common market was evolving into the Single Market.