There are good reasons why you are not told the whole truth about the monetary union. At its simplest, it means that the same currency - the Euro - circulates across the whole Euro-zone. Greece is a monetary union, based on drachma. You can go into a shop and use drachma anywhere in Greece. With the Euro, you could go anywhere in Euro-land and use the same money. This seems attractive. But there's a catch. In a monetary union, there is only one set of interest rates. There are very small differences in rates as the banks compete for business, but these are tiny. Interest rates have to be set according to what central bankers think is best for the monetary union as a whole. If this doesn't suit Greece, that's tough, but there's nothing you can do about it. In Euro-land, there is a single rate for the whole of the monetary union countries. Because of a fear of inflation in, say, France or Germany, European interest rates could be set at a high level. Jobs would then be lost not just in a region but throughout the whole of the Greece, even if Greece itself faced no inflationary threat.

There is a simple reason why every independent country wants to have its own currency. It provides huge advantages. It enables choices to be made about taxation and expenditure policies, which otherwise have to be taken elsewhere. By changing the exchange rate, it is possible for any country with its own currency to ride through disruptive economic changes, whether caused by unexpected world events, different rates of inflation, or other unforeseeable events, without growth rates going down and unemployment rising. Above all, control over your own money and your own country are inseparable. No country can be a genuine democracy within its own borders without having its own currency. Once such control is lost, real power has gone somewhere else. This is why Euro is not fundamentally an economic issue. It is about democracy and self government.

There are obvious advantages in not having to change money from one currency to another, both for businesses and private individuals. These benefits are not, however, large when compared to the costs of converting millions of accounting and computing systems, cash registers and coin operated machines to the euro. The savings have been calculated to be about 0.5% per annum of EU aggregate income, assuming that every country joins the Euro, but considerably less if only some do. On the other hand, the costs of the changes have been estimated at about 3% of EU aggregate income. Thus the change over has, at best, about a six year pay back period, and much longer if not all EU countries participate. The costs of converting currencies does not, however, vanish completely. Euro would still have to be exchanged for currencies such as the dollar and the yen. In addition, it is argued that having Euro will make pricing across the EU more transparent, will lower prices as a result of greater competition, and will encourage increased investment. Firm evidence that these favourable developments are likely actually to materialise is hard to find, however, particularly on investment. The same arguments were used for the ERM, but the deflation produced by locking currencies together caused investment to fall, not to rise.

Certainly not by the European Union authorities, although many other people have made serious attempts to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of Economic and Monetary Union. The political elite in the EU have simply assumed a Single Currency must be beneficial. They have never therefore felt it necessary to analyse the pros and cons in any objective and systematic way. Nor, in consequence, have they felt it necessary to expose its political and constitutional implications.

We would need to know whether the European Union met the requirements widely recognised by economists as being essential for a Single Currency area to be successful. We should have to assess the history of previous attempts to create Single Currency areas among nation states. We would need to compare the costs of changing to Euro with the benefits to be secured, such as reduced transaction costs. We would need to establish whether a Euro-land would be more or less likely to produce improved economic growth and better job prospects than a flexible exchange rate regime. Would there be political gains which might offset economic costs? Above all, we would need to assess whether the clear and bankable benefits from Euro are large enough to offset the project's downside risks.

Successful and long lasting Single Currency areas, which history shows are almost invariably nation states, have three key characteristics. First, the differences in competitiveness and living standards between different regions of the Single Currency area need to be reasonably small. Secondly, because some regions will inevitably do better than others, there needs to be sufficient taxation and spending power in the hands of the government of the Single Currency area to even out the disparities to an acceptable extent. Thirdly, for the same reason, it has to be reasonably easy for those without jobs in depressed areas to move to more prosperous regions to find work. Unfortunately, the EU fulfills none of these requirements. The differences in living standards and competitiveness between the countries in the EU are much wider than between the regions in nation states. The proportion of the national income of the EU Member States which currently goes through the EU budget is tiny - only just over 1.25%. By contrast, about 20% of the USA's national income goes through the Federal taxation and spending system, and more than 40% for the typical West European country. For obvious cultural, linguistic and legal reasons, labour mobility between Member States in the EU, is much lower than between the regions of the average country. Also many EU countries, including Greece unfortunately, have relatively inflexible internal labour markets.

There is plenty of historical experience of Single Currency areas made up of nation states. The late nineteenth century saw the Latin Union, a Single Currency area comprising France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. In the twentieth century examples have been the Central, East African and Caribbean Federations, Maphilendo, comprising Malaya, the Philippines and Indonesia, and, in different circumstances, the constituent parts of erstwhile Soviet Russia. Without exception, all have broken up. Within the EU itself, there have been two distinct periods when the currencies of Member States were locked together - in the Currency Snake between 1970 and 1975, and in the Exchange Rate Mechanism between 1979 and 1993. Both succumbed to economic failure, triggering a combination of political and speculative pressures which led to their collapse. In all cases, the arguments for currency stability were very similar to those heard today for Euro. History, therefore, is full of ominous warning signals about the current drive to establish European Monetary Union.

During the period of the Snake and the ERM - a total of 19 years - there is no doubt that lack of exchange rate flexibility led to deflation and slow growth. This happened because most Member States had problems competing with Germany's industrial power and low inflation rate. As a result they had to deflate their economies to protect their exchange rates, which led in turn to slower growth in Germany, as two thirds of German exports went to other EU Member States. There are grave risks that similar problems will recur with Euro, exacerbated by the terms of the convergence criteria, the independence, power and terms of reference accorded to the European Central Bank, and the terms of the Stability Pact, which controls government borrowing. With taxation and spending powers left with the Member States, and subject to political pressures, but monetary policy controlled by the independent European Central Bank, the prospects for the worst possible combination of economic policies looks all too likely to materialise. This is a lax fiscal regime combined with tight money, high interest rates and an overvalued and uncompetitive currency - the high road to stagflation, as the experience of the last 25 years has so clearly shown.

Countries like France and Germany have been preparing for years to get ready for monetary union. The whole thrust of economic policy on the countries of the European Union in the last few years has been to get their economies 'ready' for Monetary Union. The fact is that the Euro countries have been a disaster zone for jobs. Unemployment goes up and down over the course of the business cycle - the booms and recessions just like in Greece and everywhere else. But in the European Union it goes up and down around an ever-rising trend. Unemployment in the EU was 5 million in 1979, 14 million in 1992 and now nearly 19 million. It is now falling slightly, but is still nearly 5 million higher than in 1992. It hasn't happened in Britain and Norway - both countries which are unlikely to join the Euro and which haven't set their entire policies to 'getting ready' for monetary union.

The Euro will still move up and down against the dollar and the yen, and its value can fluctuate just as much as any single European currency used to do - as has been shown in the short time since its launch.

This is a strange argument, but one which pro-Euro fanatics often use. On the one hand, they say the Euro will make the European economies stronger and more prosperous than ever. Yet on the other, they say we will be punished by the Europeans if we stay out. But why should prosperous countries act like this? If the Euro really does work in this way, there will be no need to take action against Greece, for simply being left out of this wondrous zone of prosperity will be punishment enough.

In many ways, the crucial decisions have already been taken. The European Central Bank, which will run the Euro countries' economic policies, has already been set up. The bankers have been appointed, and the rules under which it operates have been fixed. The Central Bank is independent, and its decisions cannot be altered by elected politicians.

This is the complete opposite of the truth. Our government sits at these tables to represent us in our own right. If we join the Euro, our influence will be reduced. The Euro-fanatics want to eliminate all representation from individual countries, and to put in its place a Euro representative. We would lose our own, individual representation if we join the Euro.

Only death is inevitable. There is no magical tide of history which makes anything else inevitable. By their decisions and actions, people make history. In 1940, it seemed inevitable to any outside observer that Italy would conquer Greece. Yet we changed the apparently inevitable course of history.

Surely the major one is that Euro is a hugely risky enterprise, not least for the enthusiasts for greater European unity. Even if there is a honeymoon period as the Monetary Union comes into being, it is hard to believe that at some time over the next decade Euro will not come under severe strain. If it does, one of two outcomes seems inevitable. The first is that it may break up, which in the light of all the evidence is far from inconceivable. If it does, this will be a huge setback for those promoting European unity. The resulting uncertainty and cost will also be a disaster for everyone else. The other possible outcome is a further large transfer of powers from Member States to the EU, to hold Euro in place against the odds, triggered by the need to respond to rising unemployment and social unrest as the EU economies falter. This is likely to entail much larger taxation and spending authority for the EU, with a corresponding further diminution in the roles of the member states. Is either outcome one which the majority of Europeans would like to see? It is hard to believe that they would.

The Greek economy is out of phase with the rest of the EU, and for this if no other reason, waiting for a period to see how events develop must be the best policy. We need, however, to do more than this. Even if the prospects for Euro look more favourable in 2001 or 2002 than they do now, as may well happen, and especially if we are then subjected to a new huge Euro-propaganda campaign to join, we need to make sure that we do not lose sight of the long term dangers. The Euro project is driven by politics. It is not, and never has been, based on rational economic analysis. There is no substantial economic case for it. The risks are much too high that it will eventually either come to grief, or that it will suck Greece much more deeply into an increasingly centralist and undemocratic EU. We will need long lasting vigilance to ensure that we do not squander our future for short term, illusory gains.