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.
Yep, Deutsche Mark was a very strong currency. That is part of the more sinister motives for Germany to adopt the Euro. In combination with the extension of the low wage sector in the early 2000s (by so-called social democrats) Germany basically funded their export economy by devaluation of their currency.
Which led to basically the debt crisis, where they then told all their neigbhours to also weaken workers rights and sell out all their state owned property.
But as others wrote it was never about travellers but about businesses for the single market in the EU. Especially small businesses could not be bothered to look for supplies in other countries if there’s exchange shenanigans. Much easier now to source all across Europe.