The benefits of the euro are already being celebrated in Paris, six months after the currency's launch. When the French Treasury issued its latest bond, the 10-year benchmark OAT, it managed to pull off something that just a few years earlier would have been mission impossible.
"It would have been like an elephant in a china shop," explains Sylvain de Forges, chief executive of the Agency France Tresor. "We had to wait for the arrival of the euro. What we have done just wasn't possible in the French franc market. Now perhaps we are still an elephant, but a smaller one and the shop size has increased many times." According to Mr de Forges, this is proof that the euro market is a success. The e7.7bn deal was twice oversubscribed. "There are still some sceptics about the euro," he says. "But they are far removed from reality."
