European Union Convenes Forum on Single Currency

How do you sell a dream? With difficulty, if it is the single European currency you are trying to peddle.

Desperate to drum up a little public enthusiasm for one of the Old World’s grander ideas, the 15-nation European Union on Monday called together some of the Continent’s brightest minds for a three-day brainstorming session on how to get people to learn to love the euro--the name of the common European currency agreed on by member nations last month in Madrid.

If all goes well, the euro will make its debut in January 1999, with at least six EU nations trading in their marks, francs, schillings and florins for the common currency that will then, over time, be embraced by all member nations.

For outsiders such as American tourists, who invariably end their European trips with envelopes full of loose change and odd bills in several currencies, the idea may make infinite sense--more convenient and cheaper all around.

But for Europeans, it is not that easy.

As is characteristic of most EU decisions, the name “euro” was selected not because of some groundswell of public sentiment but because it was mediocre enough to offend no one.

So now, an EU officialdom far more accustomed to issuing indecipherable directives about the quality of car paint and bananas suddenly finds itself in the unhappy position of actually having to sell an idea to the European electorate--namely the euro. It has all the earmarks of a tough sell.

A British advertising executive recently asked by the newspaper European how he would sell the euro responded crisply: “With great difficulty.”

A corps of European technocrats is clearly struggling to capture the public imagination, as was evident Monday in the opening remarks to the conference by Yves-Thibault de Silguy, the member of the EU’s Executive Commission responsible for monetary union.

“A new currency, a new name,” De Silguy said, coming about as close to a sound bite as any of the evening’s opening speakers. “The euro--a name chosen to reflect the intimate relation between the Continent and its money.”

There was little applause.