Before Euro existed, each European country has it’s own currency (French Franc, German Mark, Austrian Schilling, Italian Lira, Spanish Peseta, Portuguese Escudo, Irish Pound, Dutch Guilder, Finnish Markka, etc.). meaning even by crossing the border one has to constantly swap currencies plus inflation. Is that why Euro was created?
Is it because for example, was the German Mark a weak or strong currency? Germany among others adopted Euro in 2002 replacing their own currency. Prior to the adoption of Euro, is it a headache for travelers to swap currencies a lot since each country has it’s own with varying values (volatile whether you’ll end up getting more or losing money).
However there are still EU states that haven’t adopted it today: Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Romania, not mentioning Denmark (since they opted out) with new states who adopted it recently, that being both Croatia & Bulgaria. It’s weird since despite Bulgaria adopting it, there’s parallel pricing at stores: in Lev and Euro.
People mostly got paid in their local currency.
For the initial batch of countries, the exchange rate got fixed on 31st of December 1998, and behind the scenes banks started working with Euros (in digital form) the next day, but for most people everything looked the same in day to day.
Then on January 1st 2002, everyone’s bank account got automatically converted to Euros and you could get Euros from the ATM, but for a few weeks you could pay in both Euros or the old currency (I think until the end of February if I remember correctly). After that money had be exchanged in the bank.
I think the process still looks the same when new countries join.
During the initial transition into Euro from your country of residence, have you seen parallel pricing at stores? Like did they display prices in both currencies? What about job listings that advertise salaries or minimum wage, were those converted straight to Euro on day one?
The prices had to be equivalent on both currencies. There were prices increases, but mostly for things where there was some psychological value threshold (for example imagine that the coffee was a very round 50 of the local currency for the last 10 years and then they used the change in the number because of the Euro to catch up with inflation).