I was led to believe the EU was an idea born out of the 80’s to counter the almighty dollar. Get all the nations on one currency to counter the USA.
Yes, but that idea was born in the 50s rather than the 80s. And it’s not dead, as you can see.
No, it was born in the 1930s by Otto von Habsburg. (A unified Europe under their control has always been a dream of the Habsburg family). After Hitler took over Austria, Otto fled to the United Staets, where he laid the groundwork. After the war, he continued his efforts, first somewhat behind the scenes (he was vice president of the International Paneuropean Union from 1957, finally stepping up as its president in 1973.) After consolidating the west, he pulled the strings for the Eastern European revolutions of 1989.
If you really want to dig, look for links between the pretender to the Hungarian throne and the Hungarian activist now known as George Soros.
If you go back to the 1970s (I was stationed there at the time), even visitors could note various problems. The various currencies created problems if you decided on a Thursday night, that you were going for a weekend trip from Germany to the Netherlands. Traveling meant that you had to mess around with passport control at every border (consuming hours and hours). There was a list of twenty-odd things that needed to be fixed.
So by 2001...this list of twenty-odd problems had been resolved. Whether the Euro is a positive or not....is still debated. But the EU could not resist going on and fixing things which weren’t really a problem. So today, we have a regulation over vacuum cleaners and the max power they can be. There are literally hundreds of regulations which are unnecessary.
The German manipulation over the EU is apparent. The revenge manipulation of the EU over Germany is apparent (go look at the diesel particle crisis).
The EU election in Jun 2019 promises to be a wild adventure with 20-percent of the representation being anti-migrant and likely far-right wing.
The E.U. (or E.C. or Common Market or European Coal and Steel Community) predates the '80s.
Also, it had nothing to do with the relative strengths of currencies - which are, after all, merely units of account. (And besides, the behind-the-scenes "Powers That Be" all have their dough - in the form of currency baskets - stored away in Switzerland).
Regards,