EU officials wisely refrained from celebrating the 10th anniversary of the euro's birth this past weekend. Millions of Europeans struggling to make ends meet as a result of austerity programmes to save the troubled single currency are ruining the day it was launched.
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The fate of the most widely-used common money since the Roman Empire will be decided this year, and despite determinedly optimistic predictions from government officials in recent days, it is by no means assured that the year will end with the currency bloc intact.
Banks showed how nervous they are by parking a record sum - €452 billion (Dh2.15 trillion) - at the European Central Bank (ECB) last week rather than lend to each other, despite having received almost half a trillion euros from the ECB before Christmas in low-interest, three-year loans aimed at averting a credit crunch.
The first half of this year in particular will be another roller coaster, with anxious debt auctions, gloomy economic data, credit downgrades, fraught EU negotiations about a fiscal union and rescue measures, and elections in France and Greece in April.
But there are chinks of light. The EU summit last month revealed real determination among most leaders to tackle the roots of the crisis by agreeing to binding budget discipline in a "fiscal compact" imposed by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.
The EU's crisis managers have realised their previous strategy of stop-gap measures, bailing out one nation after another, will not work. They are at last tackling a core birth defect of the euro - the lack of proper budget coordination among the 17 member states.
And a credible architecture is taking shape to help ailing states with a permanent shield in the form of the €500bn European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and added resources for the IMF.
The big question is whether markets will allow the EU enough time to set it all up. The leaders are aware of the urgency and have set themselves what may be over-ambitious deadlines.
They hope the fiscal compact will be in force by March. But Britain, the only EU member not to have signed up to it, could thwart the plan by challenging the legality of the new treaty.
And they have brought forward the launch of the ESM by one year to July. But key details remain to be agreed upon.
The main battleground early this year will be Italy, though, and the future of the euro will rest in the hands of two Italians - Mario Monti, the prime minister of a technocratic government since November, and Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB.
Mr Monti faces the daunting task of steering Italy through a deep recession early this year while pushing through budget cuts essential to restoring investor confidence in the euro zone's third-largest economy.
Winning back the trust of markets will be crucial, because Italy has to repay €53bn of maturing debt in the first quarter alone, a third of the entire euro zone's funding burden.
There is a real risk that Italy will not find enough buyers for the new bonds it issues to service its debts, and that investors will lend it money only at unsustainably high interest rates that will worsen its budget deficit and economic outlook.
In that case, Mr Draghi, chief guardian of the euro, will come under intense pressure to increase the ECB's controversial bond-buying programme to cut Italy's borrowing costs.
He is likely to relent, despite concerns that such purchases are inflationary and amount to a cop-out for countries that should be slashing their budgets.
But he will keep his "big bazooka" under lock and key. He has repeatedly ruled out unlimited bond purchases, a move that would breach the ECB's own rules.
Greece, meanwhile, is still dragging its heels on the reforms it pledged in return for international aid. The interim government formed in November under Lucas Papademos, a former ECB official, has already run out of steam.
The new government to be elected in April may be unwilling or unable to impose more pain on an exhausted population. If that happens, Greece may have to quit the currency - a disastrous signal that could throw the euro rescue effort off track.
But the prophets of doom for the euro will be proved wrong in the end, for a simple reason. Germany has benefited most from the euro, which has eradicated exchange rate risks in a market that buys 40 per cent of its exports. So Germany cannot afford to let it fail.
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