Backgrounder: Basic facts about euro

BRUSSELS, Dec. 30 (Chinese media) -- The euro will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Jan. 1, 2009 when Slovakia becomes the 16th country to use the European single currency. The following is basic facts about the euro.

Currently, the euro is the official currency of 15 member states of the European Union (EU), known collectively as the euro zone.

The euro zone is a monetary union, within which all member states have to not only abandon their former currencies, but also transfer their power of setting national monetary policy to a transnational European Central Bank (ECB), located in Frankfurt, Germany.

The euro is managed and administered by the ECB and the European System of Central Banks, which consists of the central banks of its member states.

The idea of a single currency gained ground as early as the 1970s, but it was until the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that the rules were set and the roadmap was defined for an economic and monetary union, leading to the introduction of the euro as book money in 1999 and the circulation of the euro coins and banknotes in 2002.

The introduction of the euro was a major step in European integration.

Among the 27 EU member states, the 15 countries that now use the euro are Austria, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta.

Slovakia's adoption of the euro will mark the third enlargement of the euro zone. Slovenia adopted the single currency on Jan. 1, 2007 in the first enlargement, making itself the 13th member, followed by Cyprus and Malta on Jan. 1, 2008.

After Slovakia joins, the euro zone will include a population of 328.6 million out of the EU's total of 499.7 million and account for nearly three quarters of the EU's gross domestic product (GDP), totaling 8,982 billion euros in 2007 at current prices.