On January 1st, 1999, the euro became our common currency, we do sometimes forget that, and the franc, the deutschmark, the lira are no more than non-decimal expressions, in technocratic terms, of the euro. So the euro is our common currency. Since January 1st, 1999, there is a central european bank that conducts monetary policy. What has to be said, and that's where there may have been a tiny little deception at first, although it is fully understandable because a 3-year transition period is a long time, what has to be said, is that the observation that might have been made as early as 1999 is very different depending on whether we're looking at the financial sector or other types of businesses. The financial sector switched to the euro during the first week of January 1999, completely so and throughout the whole world, on the exchange markets, the shares markets, the rates market, the public debt market that we just mentioned, the euro established itself within one week as the exclusive currency in the area, in "euroland". On the other hand, it's true to say that euro use by the general public, by yourselves, by businesses, has remained extremely sketchy, we'll come back to that. But the second major date for now, it's a date that looms before us, it's December 31st, 2001, which I shall differentiate from January 1st, 2002, it is not the same day.
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