Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Euro Intelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Euro area.

Wolfgang, why are we changing it to be such a mouthful?

We used to call it Eurozone like everyone in the UK, where we also based.

And it's occurred to us that, you know, we've been doing this for 15 years and not sort of thinking about it very much.

But it occurred to us that the word your area is probably the better one, the better expression,

because we find that zone is, you know, I mean, obviously zoning, it's not only not a flattering, but it's also

a closed and a zone is closed and the euro area is actually open. It's, you know, whatever we

think about, it's, you know, its success or lack of it, it's another matter, but at least we have

to state it's an open area

because EU member states have a right to join it, which is what makes it, oh, it's not zoned.

I noticed this tendency in English language media here in the UK, also in the United States,

and certainly also among the news agencies, to refer to the EU as a bloc, which is another of these most perimeter

constructions.

And I think people do it surreptitiously.

I've noticed in the UK newspapers that have supported Remain and who pretend that they're

very pro-European, I say pretend because many of them don't really know what they're very pro-European.

I say pretend because many of them don't really know what they're talking about, but people

who pretend that they're pro-it still refer to the EU as a block.

And I find this is the same.

The last time we used to work in politics was, I mean, in the big way, was the Eastern

block.

And that wasn't a nice organization.

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