In 2006 I ended up at Chelsea on a free transfer, so Bayern did not see a euro for me.
I don’t think I am a great. I think I’ve done nothing. I’ve done nothing in soccer. I’ve won leagues, but I haven’t won the Champions League, the World Cup, the Euro. Winning the Euro in France, that wouldn’t be bad.
As a wheelchair user, you can’t move about freely. That’s the only thing that bothers me a little. When I’m in the Euro Group in Brussels, colleagues who want to talk to me have to come to me. But I hope they know that this has nothing to do with arrogance.
Greece has given Europe the opportunity to fix a defect in the euro zone, that is the fact that we did not have a fiscal union. Now steps have been taken to begin that process. And there is more solidarity from nation to nation, and that is a good thing. That has been Greece’s gift to Europe.
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
The euro area must not be treated as an ‘opt out’ from the European Union.
The euro is… a failed currency, a wrong currency, a failed experiment.
The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction – that ‘Europe’ has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.
I think as a business it would be amazing if the euro was to collapse, but financially and economically I think that would be a bit of a tsunami for everybody to cope with.
The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.
I hope Greece is going to remain in the Euro zone.
Two decisions have damaged the stability both of the euro and of Europe: the premature admission of Greece to the euro area and the breach and subsequent weakening of the stability and growth pact.
I am personally convinced – and I think the Greek people share this belief in a fundamental way – that we can achieve fiscal consolidation more effectively and we can restore competitiveness in a more fundamental and permanent way within the euro area than outside.
The Franco-German tandem at the core of post-war European integration has become lopsided. Relations between Berlin and Paris are unusually poor, with some French politicians decrying the ‘selfish intransigence’ in the euro crisis of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel.
My inspiration is European fashion. I’m really into Euro fashion, and I also love rock n’ roll. That’s the mentality that I like to have when I’m dealing with fashion.
After the accession to the euro zone, interest rates declined substantially in Portugal.
I don’t want euro bonds that serve to mutualize the entire debt of the countries in the euro zone. That can only work in the longer-term. I want euro bonds to be used to finance targeted investments in future-oriented growth projects. It isn’t the same thing. Let’s call them ‘project bonds’ instead of euro bonds.
Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe’s budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.
I’m a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave – Italy might be the first to go – and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don’t see greater fiscal union as the answer.
I think it’s often discussed that leaving the Euro is an option for Greece. I think this is really not an option.
It would be wonderful to spend my whole career at Madrid. But my early days taught me to enjoy every moment because everything can change very quickly – I saw that with Euro 2016.
So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments.
I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany. We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That’s quite clear. I would have lost, and by seven to three.
We are keen to stress that a strong euro zone is good for a strong United Kingdom. It’s not for us to write the changes that the euro zone needs to embark on.
The exchange rate of the Rand against the dollar, pound or euro makes South Africa an attractive location. The positive side of this is it gives our artists and technicians an opportunity to work.
In that match for Holland I asked for a big responsibility, I got it and I dealt with it. I played well, I scored goals and the team qualified for the Euro 2004 finals. It was a big night and an important moment for Holland.
The euro zone must strike for a better governance structure, and there is no alternative to that. Euro zone countries must either develop an exit mechanism for troubled members, or it should embrace a closer political union: an effective governance structure that is capable of enforcing rules.
We cannot allow the bankruptcy of a euro member state like Greece to turn into a second Lehman Brothers.
Euro Disney is not my vibe. I can’t really deal with Disney, man. It’s not my thing.
I’m a great supporter of the European Union. I didn’t support entry to the Euro, not because I’m against it in principle but because I didn’t think it was economically right for Britain. But that doesn’t make me any less pro-European.
If the euro fails, Europe fails.
We will do everything to change what needs to be changed, fight against recession so that the country meets its targets, while reinforcing our country in the heart of the euro and the European Union.
If a Chancellor is trying to push something through, he must be a man of power. And if he’s smart, he knows when the time is ripe. In one case – the euro – I was like a dictator… The euro is a synonym for Europe.
It’s in our interests that the euro is a successful, strong currency.
There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.
You need basically some accountability rules, which means democratic checks and balances at the euro zone level, and definitely, you have to increase convergence in terms of taxes, in terms of social affairs and so on.
I’m kind of stunned by hip-hop and R&B’s embrace of what is essentially early-to-mid-Nineties Euro pop.
We have the EURO as a currency, which means a lot. It has not just stabilized the situation in Kosovo politically and economically, but also facilitated the direct contact that we have with Europe.
Our membership of the euro is a guarantee of monetary stability and creates the right conditions for sustainable growth. Our membership of the euro is the only choice.
The Czech Republic, severed from its old Slovak half, sits in apparent landlocked contentment, inside the European Union but outside the troubled Euro Zone, set into the new Continental mosaic like one of the small sturdy paving stones, just a few inches square, that form the sidewalks under the visitor’s ambling feet.
I think there are going to be more countries joining the euro.
The euro is not a currency. It is a political weapon to force countries to implement the policies decided by the E.U. and keep them on a leash.
You’ve got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It’s good for all of us, whether you’re in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn’t lead to a fracturing.
I have never said I would adopt the euro. Not today, not tomorrow, not in five years. We will introduce the euro when it will benefit Poles and Poland.
I would say that fears of the euro area breaking up are unfounded.
Chances are the movements of the euro as against the dollar will be relatively moderate.
Germany benefits the most from the European Union because Germany is, by far, the biggest exporter into the Euro Zone, and therefore, it benefits. And one who benefits the most must take the biggest responsibility.
As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.
The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.
A Greek exit from the E.U. and the euro would mean the Greek economy would be difficult to sustain.
The Greek people do not want to exit the euro. And I believe the Greek people already have shown that they have made major sacrifices to stay in the euro zone.
Those who claim that to leave the E.U. would damage the City are the very same as those who in the past confidently predicted, with a classic failure of understanding, that the City would be gravely damaged if the U.K. failed to adopt the euro as its currency.
