The road to the introduction of the euro has been anything but smooth. The currency crisis of 1992-93 appeared to kill the project stone dead. No-one thought in August 1993 - when the narrow ERM bands were abandoned - that less than six years later we would stand on the brink of the creation of a new single currency. And even a couple of years ago, new currency tensions and economic difficulties in many member-states led to concerns over whether enough states would qualify.

Among all the ups and downs, one piece of negotiation has proved crucial. Maastricht in December 1991 was where the deal was done. Europe's new power brokers at the time, Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand added a few lines of text during the final treaty negotiations which were to prove crucial. The treaty stipulated that EMU would go ahead in 1997 if enough member states were ready, but if it had not happened at that stage, it would go ahead anyway in 1999, no matter how few member-states qualified.

This solemn declaration and commitment to 1999 has proved crucial. The 1997 deadline was soon abandoned and, if the treaty had been worded a bit less precisely, the commitment to 1999 might have been abandoned along the way. Instead the clock was started in cold and windswept Maastricht and the countdown is nearly over.