Jean-Claude Juncker Quotes

I'm a firm believer in the monetary union.

The euro is a sickly premature infant, the result of an over-hasty monetary union.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schaeuble, her finance minister, are right to oppose fiscal and bank unions without political union.

It's political glue inside Europe to keep it together - the euro is the best thing going for it since the creation of the common market.

Markets themselves are looking for stability, and I think we have underestimated the capacity of Europe... to actually create a more stable framework for the whole issue of debt management, bonds, and so on.

A common currency imposes on us a duty to cooperate more on policy.

In order to consolidate the euro we need to harmonise our economic, fiscal and social policies, hence we are going toward greater integration.

The euro is not a currency. It is a political weapon to force countries to implement the policies decided by the E.U. and keep them on a leash.

Whoever pays should control; whoever pays should sanction. I agree. But budgetary union should be completed by a partial mutualisation of debts through eurobonds.

In the end, the politics of the euro zone weren't strong enough to create a fully integrated fiscal union with a common banking system, etc.

A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, which means countries can't manage their own currency to suit their own needs. You need a variety of institutions to help nations for which the policies aren't well suited. Europe introduced the euro without providing those structures.

I am in favour of a different Europe, where each state can adopt its fiscal and monetary system.

Let's start with the euro. What on earth were we thinking? How could anyone with the faintest grasp of economics have believed it was anything other than sheer insanity to yoke together diverse national economies such as Greece, Ireland, Germany and Finland under a single exchange rate and a single interest rate?

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.

Massive progress has been made in the last five years. More progress has to be made in terms of fiscal union and banking union.

The economic union - creating a big common market, like the United States, so that you can compete across borders. There are common rules, regulations, and simplification, and that is still a good reason, too. When they put their monetary union together, that created a rigidity that made it hard for currency fluctuations. They don't really have a solution to that.

A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be powerfull cement of our union. It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry.

We already have a federation. The 11, soon to be 12, member States adopting the euro have already given up part of their sovereignty, monetary sovereignty, and formed a monetary union, and that is the first step towards a federation.

It [the Euro] is a decisive step towards ever closer political and institutional union in Europe. Above all, it is political.

Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.

Indeed, the creators of the euro envisioned it as an instrument to promote political union.

What we should be doing in the EU as a whole is more economic integration in the single market, rather than less.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.

There are plenty of ways countries may come together without having a single currency.

The need to promote the adoption of a global currency as a vital element in the integration of the global economy is self-evident.