Last month we already saw how the Euro will change the life of the governments by drastically curtailing their room to manoeuvre and by banning the competitive depreciation option to re-establish internal unbalances. The new European single currency will radically affect people's life as well by changing their habits, introducing new attitudes, creating new opportunities and new dangers too. A completely different era is now about to open, starting from the return of prices with decimal figures we stopped being used to in the past generations. Last month somebody proposed to simplify things for common people by fixing the change between the lira and the Euro at 2000 lira instead of the quota lower by about two percentage points that was applied when the Union was established. It would have clearly been simpler because, from an accounting standpoint, it would have turned the whole conversion operation into the equivalent of the “heavy lira” adoption. It would have clearly also been more profitable for our industries as this small devaluation would have guaranteed another easy help to make their export prices more profitable. However, apart from the fact that a two-year exchange stability was one of the fundamental requirements to enter the EMU and that, however, the other ten members would have never allowed us such a “trick”, this time we would not even have been interested: it would have meant, in fact, that the Italians' properties would have suddenly been devalued by some 300 thousand billion lira in Euro figures!  
So we have to be patient and to accept the fact that, instead of one thousand lira - today's most common unit of measurement - we will not have to give half a Euro but “only” 0,48875 (according to this moment's figures).  
The conversion's first trap is hidden right here, as everyone can easily understand. As there will not be a currency lower than a Euro's cent in circulation anymore, a rounding off to the highest figure of the prices will become inevitable. Theoretically speaking, this should be rather negligible, if not even infinitesimal, and won't probably affect the delicate cost of living index. In practice, on the other hand, there will also be those that will try to make larger profits, maybe even without their “victims'” realising immediately about it, in the frantic and certainly even confusing  transition passage between one currency and the other. The danger will clearly be as sharp as the figures to be converted are small. The transition phase for many people, chiefly the elderly used to counting in lira, will however create many problems. Some even spoke of “epoch-making confusion”, but maybe piling on the agony is a wrong attitude, especially if we consider that the conversion will be taken over a rather long period of time and that even the people at the Canicattì's market will find their way to get to learn the new calculation methods.  
Things will get much more traumatic and expensive for the State, public bodies, companies and mainly for the banks, especially if we consider that many information systems are today integrated and that the non-synchronisation of their conversion might have dramatic consequences. The material cost alone for Italy was (prudentially, to avoid all alarms) estimated to be 30 thousand billion lira, accounting for a hefty cent of the GDP and the equivalent of a small-sized financial measure. Even if the estimate were not exact - some experts, however, even spoke of some 50 thousand billion lira, including the aggregate induced activities - it will nevertheless be a huge drain that will be concentrated in a considerably short period of time and that will have a big impact on various sectors. Is it possible that those who will have to bear all this will not try somehow to ultimately lay it on consumers? Should this happen, will we be able to curb inflation within the now compulsory 2% ceiling? This is another unknown detail in the already problematic route towards that Stability Pact that we now have to accept as some sort of straitjacket.  
Apart from the financial aspect, the conversion also entails a series of technical problems that are creating much worry around. These problems concern software, synchronisation, adjusting personnel and a whole series of other aspects that not even the experts can number. After all this is an unprecedented operation involving three hundred million people (in fact, it cannot work in Italy if it doesn't work with similar ways and times even in other countries), taking place in an extremely complex historical period. Everything, really everything, must be changed in fact, from banknote to revenue stamps, from machines that make out parking tickets to casinos' slot machines, from Stock Exchange quotations to supermarkets' prices and so on and so forth.  
The new currency is now at the door, but how many of us have begun to think about the total amount of our salary in Euro or what the price of milk will be?  
However, apart from these snags, there will also be big advantages, especially for the most entrepreneurial and dynamic part of our country that is already used to interacting with Europe. There is that famous example of the Italian citizen who leaves to tour Europe and who has to “change” his money whenever crosses a border and who then goes home with a halved pile although he did not spend even a lira. It is clear that, after the adoption of the single currency which will allow us to shop indifferently in Munich, Paris or Lisbon (but not in London, unfortunately, as the British government decided to stay out of the EMU for the moment), travellers will not have to pay any commissions anymore and will save considerably; they also won't have that small change when they get home that cannot be changed and that usually ends up and is forgotten in a drawer.  
This ultimately secondary benefit for the mere traveller becomes a huge earning for people having a business relationship with foreigners, or want to invest in securities belonging to another country of the Union or must make transactions in currency. So there will be neither risks for the exchange, nor bank commissions that are frequently uncontrollable concerning the conversion from or into lire, nor all those unknown factors that still today, somehow, involve operations with foreign countries. From a contractual standpoint, selling a Düsseldorf's company will be like signing a contract with a company in Pizzighettone. The huge benefits that the single market has already brought to our companies (not only industrial) will double thanks to the opportunity to do business in one's own currency, with the certainty that when the amount of money that one will have to pay out or collect expires, it won't change.  
 Another by-product of the Euro will be low interest rates, meaning that by mingling our volatile lira with other countries' currencies which have been virtuous for a long time, we will be sure that a return to the past will not be possible (with the exception of unexpected big problems that might have so devastating an impact that we'd better touch wood). The meaning of all this is that if I am an entrepreneur and I want to contract a loan at a certain rate, I am entitled to expect that it will not considerably change for quite a long period of time: this will clearly allow me to plan my activities much better and, maybe, even to risk more.  
The competition factor will be at stake too in a much stronger way with respect to what happened so far. The mortgage issue that focussed the media's attention for some days at the end of April is, within such context, emblematic. Because of the differential of the still existing interest rates with the other countries of the Union even as the final closing phase of the single currency is approaching, due to both the lira's traditional weakness and to our banks' lower efficiency, mortgages were still considerably more expensive than in the rest of Europe. Some mortgages were old pathologically - interest rates had been agreed on when our inflation was still around 4 to 5% and the treasury bills' yield was 12 - others were new physiologically, because in Italy the spread between interests receivable and interests payable has always been higher than in anywhere else. So the coming of the problem to the fore and the wide advertisement of cheaper mortgages offered by some specialised British banks were enough for some of our banks to make the best of a bad job and start to offer (risking losses) a 5% rate too in order not to miss out on the market.  
The single currency, alongside a complete opening of the borders, will also reduce, if not even eliminate, the differences in price currently existing between the various countries for the same products. Due to some clear reasons related to operating costs, a coke at the Champs-Elysées will always be more expensive than one at Baggio, but for other products (cars, for instance), certain tricks that big multinationals are doing now will no longer be possible. The whole thing will maybe deprive us of the pleasure of going shopping in other countries but everything should be cheaper because the prices should level down. For a complete standardisation to take place, however, it will be necessary to wait for the introduction of a single fiscal system as well for all the members of the EMU, and this requires some further steps to be taken to achieve a European unity that, despite some willing people's efforts, still has to come.  
On the whole, the Euro should provide the Italian citizen with a mixture of convenience and of stability that, after the initial bewilderment, will certainly be taken favourably. Beyond the sentimental, so to speak, regret for a currency that, in good and bad, has been with us as from the unity of Italy, we should also feel as travellers who, after a stormy voyage, finally reach a safe harbour. The lira has been devalued too many times, it has gone through too many critical moments and has made too many management mistakes for the Italians to disapprove of a “loss of sovereignty” that the introduction of the Euro entails. There is no need to go back to the times when exporting capitals was a criminal offence and when people resorted to all sorts of tricks to transfer their money abroad when the national currency was unstable, to understand that this currency will unquestionably rank second, if not even first, in the world in terms of stability and purchasing power, and this is certainly a reassuring thing.  
Furthermore, the awareness that we will have to gain these certainties every day, will presumably induce us, as a nation, to have a virtuous behaviour that we neglected in the past whose advantages, however, we appreciate today.  
We will also have to change many bad old habits. Despite being a founding member of Europe, Italy continues to have an awfully small-town behaviour, showing little interest for the things and the people on the other side of the Alps. This situation certainly has to change when the Euro is adopted, because a Spanish or Belgian Minister of Economics' behaviour that we might overlook today, will become relevant for our every-day life too. Both financial operators as well as a large number of people will have a direct interest to know about what happens in the rest of the Union. Alongside this interest, the knowledge of languages, abroad stages, a push towards a general integration will increase. And there will also be an unquestionable advantage for our ability to develop a “country system” custom-built for the new needs.  
Those who are now complaining about the birth of an incomplete Euro that will not circulate in four out of fifteen countries of the Union - among them the important Great Britain - are certainly right. This division bears many upsetting questions which will not ease the starting phase of an experiment that, to be completely new in the history of the world finance, is also less prone to stumble. Some countries like Great Britain, Sweden and Denmark, in fact, although had the right parameters, decided not to enter the EU whereas others, like Greece, really did not manage to get the standards in time.   Everybody hopes that this division might be settled within two or three years, and for this to happen it is necessary for the Euro to be a real success. And we have to contribute as citizens by learning to “think European”.