A Tactic of the Euro Elitists

From today's Open Europe news summary:

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports on Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s speech in Warsaw today, in which he is expected to argue, “Any change to governance structures must not lead to a weaker and divisive Europe where the aims of ‘Euro ins’ are set against those of ‘Euro outs’. There can be no inhibiting of trade, for example, and no obstructing the single market. Any decision that affects the 27 must always be taken by the 27.”
Open Europe blog Spectator Coffee House blog FT Mail Guardian Times

One of the tactics of the Euro elitists is to equate support for the Euro as support for free markets and opposition to the Euro as opposition to free markets. This is a logical fallacy. Many countries engage in free trade with one another even though they do not use a common currency. Nevertheless, if Nick Clegg's desire is to expand trade while minimizing currency conversion costs, he should support a return to the classical nineteenth century gold standard in which each country's currency was merely an expression of a certain weight of gold. He should reflect upon these words of Ludwig von Mises in Human Action:

"The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic. In the eyes of the free traders its main eminence was precisely the fact that it was an international standard as required by international trade and the transactions of the international money and capital market. It was the medium of exchange by means of which Western industrialism and Western capital had borne Western civilization into the remotest parts of the earth’s surface, everywhere destroying the fetters of age-old prejudices an superstitions, sowing the seeds of new life and new well-being, freeing minds and souls, and creating unprecedented progress of Western liberalism ready to unite all nations into a community of free nations peacefully cooperating with one another."