This is the very same challenge that faces us: making the euro a sound – that is to say stable – currency. 2. The history of European integration  Let me first deal briefly with the history of European integration. This process has been strongly driven by political motives.
The main underlying aim was to avoid a recurrence in the future of the wars which devastated 20th century Europe. To that end, central Europe’s largest country, Germany, should be firmly embedded in a European structure. As Thomas Mann has aptly put it: “a European Germany, rather than a German Europe”.