In the early 1990s, the most pressing public policy problem in Europe was mounting debt. The average general government debt ratio as a percentage of GDP almost doubled in a little more than a decade, from almost 38% in 1980 to 73% in 1993 (AMECO 2005). These aggregates even conceal the full extent of the problem – in countries like Belgium, Ireland, and Italy the debt ratio moved above 100% of GDP. With these problems evident, the heads of state and government agreed to the road map to a single currency in the form of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. The designers of Economic and Monetary Union expected that governments would get their economies in shape before they adopted the new currency, the euro. Member states were consequently supposed to meet five “Maastricht” criteria. The most contentious of the five criteria concerned fiscal policy. States were expected to have general government budget deficits no greater than 3% of GDP and debts no larger than 60% or on a declining path. While the debt level ultimately was not critical, the deficit level was, and in the immediate years after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in February 1992 it looked as if the euro would not get off the ground because of widespread deficit problems. In 1994, only Ireland and Luxembourg had deficits below 3%. A eurozone without big countries like France and especially Germany would never have been created in the first place.