Speech delivered by Christian Noyer, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, on the occasion of his visit to the United States, January 2000
Introduction
First of all, I should like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to address such a distinguished audience.
The topic I shall address today - the international impact of the euro - cannot be fully grasped without considering the particular, and to a large extent unprecedented, nature of this currency. By severing the traditional link between money and state sovereignty, the euro has become one currency issued by one central bank in an area of - for the time being at least - 11 states which, in this respect, have become oneeconomy - the euro area. Although the largest single country in the euro area accounts for slightly more than 4% of world GDP, the euro area as a whole accounts for 15%. This is less than the share of the United States, at 20.5% of world GDP, but around twice that of Japan, at 7.8%. Moreover, the euro area has the highest share of world trade, with a ratio of area-wide exports to total world exports of 19.5%, well ahead of the shares of both the United States and Japan, at 15% and 8.5% respectively.
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