A short message, flashing on Reuters screens at 15:36 Frankfurt time on 4 January 1999, announced the launch of the first open market operation of the Eurosystem, a two-week repurchase tender at a fixed interest rate of 3 per cent. This simple act symbolised the birth of the monetary policy for the new single European currency, the euro.

The introduction of the euro (technically, the start of ‘Stage Three’ of Economic and Monetary Union, EMU) marked at the same time the beginning of the new currency and the end of a long preparatory process. The key initial steps in this process date back to the 1950s, when the European Economic Community was created and began to take action in the field of monetary and financial co-operation. After the relatively prosperous decade of the 1960s, the time for a single European money seemed ripe: the Werner Plan (1970) proposed a first blueprint for a monetary union. But the plan failed in the climate of generalised monetary instability that dominated Europe and the world in the following years. Yet, efforts to promote monetary integration and stability in Europe continued, first in the so-called monetary ‘snake’, then in the European Monetary System. The process regained momentum in the 1980s, with the approval of the Single Act (1986), eventually leading to the completion of the single market and the elimination of capital controls.