One Europe, raring to go

11 of the European Union's 15 members will start phasing in a single currency, the Euro, on January 1st 1999. The exchange rates among the countries will be fixed as of 1 January. Each nation's central bank will become subject to Europe's newly established central bank rather as the regional Federal Reserve Banks in the United States report to the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC Transactions on all stock markets will be denominated exclusively in the new monetary unit. All large banks with Europe-wide pretensions will begin keeping at least one set of books in the Euro, and so, too, will all multinationals with serious European ambitions. Working from a common European foundation, corporate Europe, as well as political Europe, will have a much bigger world presence. The Euro is the vehicle for Europe to establish itself as a global actor. If the process of monetary unification proceeds more or less on schedule, and if it eventually embraces all the current members of the Common Market, their total economic product will exceed North America's. That prospect involves so many exciting opportunities for engineering innovators. In this article the authors begin to assess the opportunities.