The European Central Bank's launch party for the euro in Frankfurt on Monday morning had all the ghastly hallmarks of an official European event.
Children from each euro zone member-state were paraded as incarnations of Europe's future while a hapless musical theatre troupe performed a cringe-inducing hymn to the single currency.
At around the same time in Brussels, the Commission President, Romano Prodi, and the Economic Affairs Commissioner, Pedro Solbes, were spluttering the usual platitudes about the historic significance of the introduction of euro notes and coins.
No amount of ham-fisted stage management could conceal, however, the real importance of the currency changeover as a shift in the process of European integration.
As the ECB President, Wim Duisenberg, suggested on Monday, the introduction of the euro will serve as a catalyst for further integration in such fields as economic, defence and foreign policies.
Europe's single currency has always had more to do with politics than economics, even if Mr Duisenberg claims that it boosts economic growth and promotes stability. When EU leaders started the process of economic and monetary union at Maastricht in 1991 it was partly in response to German unification the previous year.
France was determined that a bigger Germany should lose its dominant economic position in Europe and that the Bundesbank should no longer be able to determine the monetary policy of the entire continent.
The historian Emmanuel Todd, who advised both Francois Mitterand and Jacques Chirac, summed up the French attitude to the euro succinctly.
"Behind the euro euphoria lay a wish to make Germany disappear as a financial big power - to resolve the German question once and for all," he said.
The former German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, believed that political union was essential for the success of economic and monetary union. But as Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker - the only surviving head of government who was at Maastricht - recalled this week, Dr Kohl held back from pressing for political reforms.
"Germany needed the 11 partner countries then in the union to deal with its own reunification. And the mood within the union was not ripe for a closer brush with integration.
'If Chancellor Kohl had pushed too hard back then on the issue of political integration, some partners would inevitably have got the impression that Germany was so insistent on political union because it did not really want the currency union.
"That in turn would have had disastrous consequences for reunification and for how European partners came to feel about it," Mr Juncker said.
Mr Juncker acknowledges that economic and monetary union is a highly political project but he argues that the euro alone will not banish the sense of popular alienation from the EU.
"I always used to see monetary union as a policy of peace pursued by other means. Today, however, I believe that it alone will not, in the long term, be enough as a ferment or bonding agent for Europe. That is why we need continuing political moves," h e said.
The successful launch of euro notes and coins is likely to intensify pressure to co-ordinate economic policies more closely within the EU.
The Taoiseach accepts that the issue of tax harmonisation will remain on the European agenda, although he believes it will not become a reality during his political lifetime.
It is likely, however, that the present, fairly informal system of consultation about national budgets will become firmer.
And France, with the support of the Commission, is pressing for a bigger role for euro zone finance ministers as a counterbalance to the ECB.
Perhaps the most significant impact of the euro notes and coins will be on public attitudes to the EU.
Like the Schengen Agreement which abolished border controls between most EU states, the euro is a practical manifestation of the usefulness of European integration.
It could serve as an antidote to the remoteness of the European institutions while reassuring European citizens that they can take an important step towards sharing responsibility without losing their national identity.
This new popular mood will influence the deliberations of a Convention on the Future of Europe that will start meeting in March.
The Convention will present ideas to EU leaders on how to make the EU more effective and more democratic, partly through re defining what policy areas are best dealt with in Brussels and what should be left to national governments.
The EU's image has suffered in recent years from the corruption allegations that brought down Jacques Santer's Commission in 1999 and Mr Prodi's shambling performance since then.
Although many advocates of a strong Commission would like Mr Prodi to step down, he is almost certain to stay in office for another three years.
If the Munster MEP, Pat Cox, becomes President of the European Parliament later this month, he will represent a fresh, articulate voice at the heart of European politics.
Mr Cox is a profoundly ambitious politician who is determined to lift the profile of the European Parliament, long the Cinderella of European institutions.
Any fresh momentum behind European political integration will present headaches for the Government, which is increasingly isolated in Europe.
Senior diplomats acknowledge that Britain's new enthusiasm for further integration in such areas as justice and home affairs has taken the Government by surprise.
The challenge facing Bertie Ahern and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, is to harness the new mood created by the euro to fashion an imaginative, reinvigorated policy towards our relationship with Europe.
Denis Staunton is European Correspondent of The Irish Times