18 NOVEMBER 2000, Page 52

Design fault

WIM Duisenberg's trouble is that the euro is a currency without a country. The euro- zone has no chancellor or prime minister who can be invited to choose between tight- ening policy and watching the euro col- lapse. Instead, it has ministers from 11 different countries with different economies and different priorities, each of them willing to knife one or more of the others for twopence or three eurocents. The idea that they should all get together and make themselves unpopular for the euro's good is too absurd to consider. What they might not care to admit is that their currency has a design fault. One cure for this would be to turn the eurozone into a country. Another would be to dissolve the euro into its constituent currencies and start again. Another would be to pension Wim off and forget it.