You forget that there are things like the ECB that decides the monetary policy, a sort of decisional center, if not yet a government, that give the hints of all the economic (and not only) politics, massive economic interchanges, harmonized laws, a common level of income/ education/ social benefits...
Moreover ,the integration process is somothing taken for granted by most of the population, and it is going to keep on.
For example, the Germans are (were) rightly proud of their Deutschmark, due, in no small part, to their monetary discipline. The Italians, on the other hand, have a history of monetizing their national debt, producing severe inflationary pressures.
A country's monetary philosophy has many policy implications, which manifest themselves in many ways, such as government debt, size of the public sector, inflationary forces, expectations of the governed, etc. Try to imagine the Italians living under the austere discipline of a Prussian monetary policy. There would be riots in the street. (And in fact there were riots, when tight money policies were attempted in the 70's and 80's).
My personal conclusion is that you have never been neither in Germany nor in Italy in the last ten years. If you read international newspapers, apart from comic books, you should know that in a meeting held in 1993 between the major authorities of Germany and Italy, they decided that Italy needed infact a "Prussian" fiscal discipline, to avoid an Argentina-like end that at the time seemed unavoidable. Of course the support of the Bundesbank was necessary,and the present conclusions are two: 1)After the big scare, now Italians dislike (personal and public) debt like hell and see the hawkish policy of Wim Duisemberg as a guarantee against lavish expenditures by corrupt politicians and the erosion of their wealth. 2)As i said berfore, Northen Italy's macroeconomic data mirrors that of Western Germany, and this situation is not going to change since those areas are integrated (almost) like New York and New Jeresy.
If Euroland component countries have wildly different expectations, why has there been relatively quiet acceptance of the Euro transition?
Frankly, this sentence is quite meaningless.
Even in these relatively good times, the Euro has been under pressure. Its value, relative to the US dollar, has fallen some 25% since its introduction 3 years ago.
Currencies fluctuate. The Euro has got some problems, because Euroland's economy got problems. Anyway, it appreciated 6% since october.
I know the EU institutions are inefficient. But that's the European way: slow adjustments. I'm not worried about the future of Europe (and the world ,consequently), because all the people i know have, more or less, democratic beliefs and behaviours (i.e. nothing to do with the soviets), and the idea of Europe they are developing ( a variegate puzzle of friendly nations) is opening their minds to a more wide vision of the world.
The future of Europe is questionable, but saing that the Euro is a joke is the same to say the Earth is flat.
A Freeper article yesterday indicated that the EU is pushing Croatia to give greater autonomy to Istria. If so, will this precedent also apply to Northern Italy, and facilitate the goals of the Lombard League? Or, for that matter, the re-establishment of an independent Venice?
Are there any Italians calling for re-establishment of a Germanic state roughly encompassing the historic bounds of the Holy Roman Empire -- say, running down to the Apennines and Ravenna (I realize that the Empire was in Genoa long after it had left Ravenna).