The euro and Germany's trade surplus The euro was introduced in 1999 to facilitate the free movement of labor and goods between European Union countries. A common currency used by its member states allowed European consumers to immediately see the price of a product, instead of seeing the price in another member state's currency and having to run it through a converter to see the price in local currency. . Although the euro has made cross-border purchases of goods easier, one of the main disadvantages of the euro is its inability to adapt to the economic conditions of individual EU member states. The robustness of the German economy has resulted in a huge trade surplus and has therefore had a negative impact on the economies of the rest of the EU. The euro is valued in the majority of EU countries and when a country like Germany is prosperous, a common currency governing several countries has negative consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essayThe common currency Euro has made shopping and traveling across the EU easier. Exchanging currencies while traveling to other countries and having to pay fees to do so was a thing of the past. This has made cross-border shopping more convenient with the price quoted in euros, whether the retailer is located in France or Portugal. The advantage of having a common currency was also its biggest disadvantage. The value of the euro is the same in Germany as in Greece, regardless of the economic conditions of each country. Currently, two member states have renounced the eurozone and the obligation to adopt the euro. Denmark chose not to adopt the euro as a condition of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the UK is in the process of withdrawing from the EU completely. EU economies have been struggling since the market collapse after the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008. Germany is a major exception. A country with a robust economy supported by high-end exports including cars, machinery, electronics, appliances and pharmaceuticals. Germany has been praised for its economic success, and rightly so, but has this success been negative for the rest of the EU? The global economy is healthier when money is distributed and no country has a massive trade surplus or deficit. A country like Germany that has a large trade surplus, meaning it exports or sells a lot of products to the rest of the world, but doesn't spend the money it makes. This means that Germans are not reciprocating by spending this money on good Italian wines or Greek olive oil, which would help those countries' economies. So the answer is that Germany's trade surplus is bad for the EU, but it's not entirely Germany's fault. Much of this has to do with the value of the euro. The value of the euro against Germany is undervalued by around 5 to 15 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. When a country's economic well-being is high, as is the case in Germany, the value of the local currency should increase to balance the trade surplus. In this case, if Germany held a local currency as it did before the euro with the Deutsche Mark, increasing the local currency would balance the trade surplus by making German products more expensive, but instead the common currency , the euro, has fallen further due to the faltering economies of the rest of the EU, which only makes German products even cheaper,.