Second, with the creation of the euro, investors and borrowers active in the financial markets of the euro area have de facto been granted access to the euro-denominated market. This market, even if it is not yet fully integrated at the area-wide level, is larger and more open than any of the markets denominated in the predecessor currencies of the euro.
Since the early 1990s Europe has primarily dealt with its domestic problems in a rather inwardlooking attitude: –  the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Iron curtain and the political and economic transformation process of the former communist states in central and eastern Europe 1989/90;  –  the preparation for EMU in the second half of the nineties;  –  enlargement by 10 new member states in 2004;  –  the structural reform process starting at the end of the nineties.