AS 3,000 blue and yellow balloons launched into the grey Brussels sky, Europe’s financial leaders popped corks on 9-litre champagne bottles. It was January 1, 1999, and the euro had just been born.

“We are standing at the dawn of a new era in history,” said Rudolf Erlinger, then Austrian finance minister and chairman of the EU group of finance ministers, who summed up the triumphant mood. Portugal declared itself delighted, Finland honoured. Germany urged everyone to work harder, while Italy pleaded for ever closer union.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French finance minister at the time, ended a lyrical speech with the declaration “Vive la France en Europe”.

Ten years later, the champagne bubbles have gone flat. There was no celebration to mark the single currency’s 10th anniversary a few weeks ago.

It coincided with the onset of recession in the eurozone, not just the worst since the single currency’s inception but the most serious since European countries established a common market in the 1950s.

Eurozone gross domestic product fell 1.5% in the final three months of last year and recent evidence points to even weaker numbers in the current quarter. Germany’s industrial production slumped 7.5% in January compared with December.

More worryingly, the global financial crisis has exposed differences among the 16 members of the euro that have led some people to question its ability to survive.

A handful of European countries are expected to need some form of bailout to repair their public finances, which have ballooned in the face of bank bailouts and a decade of consumer-led growth. Greece and Ireland head the list, followed by Portugal and possibly Italy, Austria and Spain.

If the euro is to hold itself together, it could fall to the stronger members, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, to stump up the cash.

As Europe’s finance ministers met last week to compare notes ahead of yesterday’s G20 finance summit in Sussex, the euro issue continued to bubble in the background.

“The credibility of monetary union is at stake,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, who heads the euro group of finance ministers, after revealing that expansion of the euro had been put on ice.

Later this year, when German taxpayers are likely to be asked to put their money on the line to support bailouts for neighbours that have spent the past 10 years growing rich on debt, the cracks in the euro could be forced wider apart.

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