MOST Germans have opposed a single European currency ever since the idea was first mooted and even now, more than two thirds of the population is against the project. The mass circulation daily Bild newspaper, which is seldom mistaken about public opinion, launched a campaign to "save our D mark" as early as 1991.
The mark has an almost totemic place in the German popular imagination, symbolising the economic success that followed defeat in the World War II. This success, and the strength and stability of the currency that went with it, helped to fill the vacuum in German national identity left by the memory of fascism and the country's postwar division.
"We have a culture of stability in Germany that is shaped by the aspirations, expectations and fears of the people who elect us and depend on us, small savers for example," according to Mr Gerhard Schroeder, the popular prime minister of Lower Saxony who many commentators expect to lead the Social Democrat (SPD) challenge to Chancellor Kohl in next year's federal elections.
Although he insists that he is in favour of EMU as long as the Maastricht criteria are fulfilled, Mr. Schroeder called last week for the starting date to be postponed until the economic conditions were right and warned that a weak euro could devalue the savings of millions of Germans.
Despite the public's distaste ford the single currency, there will be no referendum on the issue and Mr Schroeder's party is unlikely to fight an election campaign on the euro.
"The public has never liked the euro but there is no evidence that this opposition can be transformed into an electoral advantage for one party or another," according to Dr Edgar Piet of the Allensbach polling institute.
"One reason is that people do not generally associate the hardship caused by unemployment and public spending cuts with the single currency. And although they don't want the currency, they expect it to arrive sooner or later and they trust the present government to handle the change better than anyone else." Polls of senior politicians, business people and leading opinion formers show support for the Euro at a staggering 85 per cent. More than 70 per cent of the elite are convinced that the currency will start on time, compared with 24 per cent 18 months ago. All the parties in the Bundestag favour early entry to EMU, with the exception of the excommunist Party of Democratic Socialism.
Dr Josef Janning of the European Research Group in Munich believes that the consensus among Germany's elite in favour of the euro will prove decisive. "The political elite is united behind the single currency. Big business is for it. The big banks are for it. The trade unions back it. Most Germans regard the European Union as a good thing and society's leading figures realise that EMU is necessary before further political integration is possible," he said.
