want to deepen integration , you have to take the step the Member States agree upon , and , as it was not possible to have a political union , that was , for me , monetary union .
And , as we have had the monetary union since 1 January 1999 , this was of course a historical date . It was not just the change of money and coins and bank notes , it was really for me the historic day that Europe wants to go forward in deepening the European integration and in playing a proper role in this world from the political and from the economic point of view .
Parliament did not fully endorse all the points in the Treaty of Maastricht , and critical voices were raised against the convergence criteria relating to budgetary discipline ( notably , the 60 % indebtedness and 3 % budget deficit criteria ) and their inclusion in a European treaty , with the risk that they might not resist external shocks . As Randzio-Plath explained , this debate was particularly difficult for her as a German :
The EP could not understand in what way a European constitutional treaty fixed figures which could be overthrown by external shocks or developments which even the governments could not control … And as a German I had even more difficulties to explain because everybody said , ah , this is the German handwriting in the Maastricht Treaty . And so , being critical towards these criteria , I had nevertheless to defend them because the Treaty was a treaty and there was no chance to change the Maastricht Treaty .
The convergence criteria in the Treaty of Maastricht were a very delicate issue . Jean-Claude Trichet , in his interview , expressed his surprise when Germany later did not respect the criteria and re-
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