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I found this article to be very interesting outlining Germany and it’s use of the Euro.

Horst Teubert:

“The EU has turned into “a first-class global finance power with the Euro”, declares the German Foreign Office on its website. And it declares further: “For the first time the finance markets possess a credible alternative to the dollar.” This is especially important for German policy: Finally they can compete with the USA. With the Euro Germany has got a currency that makes this possible. German bankers are even hoping the Euro could beat the dollar. The Chief Economist of the “Deutsche Bank” declares: “In the not too distant future, in short, the Euro will be to the dollar what Airbus has become to Boeing.” The European Airbus outstripped US-Boeing in the meantime.

The Euro is to compete with the dollar in the whole world, and for that purpose German bankers offer the strangest suggestions. You know, on the continent we have one-Euro-coins but no one-Euro-notes Recently a German banker declared publicly that the one-dollar-note was world famous; so the EU should introduce a
one-Euro-note because a coin could never become as famous as a note. Of
course this is a very strange idea, but it shows how eager Germans are to compete with the US.

Yet the Euro isn’t a currency which can be influenced by all Euro-countries
to the same extent: Germany is the country with the strongest influence on the new currency. When the first Euro-coins were introduced German newspapers declared: “The Euro speaks German.” It speaks German, not French and not at all
English. The currency policies of the “European Central Bank” which is situated in the German town of Frankfurt am Main has been established according to German concepts and is formed by them. The statutes of the “European Central Bank”, the “convergence criteria” and the “stability pact” correspond to concepts developed by the German Ministry of Finance. The German Minister of Finance succeeded in getting them accepted against concepts suggested by other countries.

Of course Germany, the strongest power of the EU, has enough influence to shape the political general conditions for the Euro in accordance with its national interests. You can recognize this very easily by the “stability criteria”. To make the Euro become a stable currency an upper limit for new indebtedness of states was fixed at three percent. The first state that threatened to exceed this limit after the introduction of the Euro was Portugal, which was warned officially by the EU. The second state that threatened to exceed the limit of three percent was Germany - and Germany was not warned by the EU. As long as Germany itself exceeds the limit
there won’t be any consequences. When Germany again fulfills the stability criteria, other states, which do not, will get into serious trouble.”

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