Just as our own Central Bank loses its teeth and most of its power, the new European Central Bank is gearing up to be the most powerful body of its kind in the world.
But there are legitimate questions to be asked about the extent of its independence, about its policy objectives and how it interrelates with Europe's politicians.
Pressure has been building for some time from most of Europe's governments for some sort of a political counterbalance to the monetary orthodoxy of the ECB.
The left-wing politicians who make up the governments of nine of the 11 countries entering the euro are not wholeheartedly in favour of the agreement reached by their mostly conservative predecessors on the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact negotiated in Dublin.
The British Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, has also now decided to join forces with the other left-of-centre finance ministers.
All are hoping that they will be able to persuade the ECB to put some emphasis on employment as well as the traditional focus on inflation, or price stability.
Germany's new Finance Minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, is the main protagonist behind a document produced by the finance ministers and set to be discussed by them at an informal meeting next week.
It is likely to call for the greater use of counter-cyclical public spending to help prevent recessions and boost employment.
The ministers would like to see more openness from the ECB, on paper the most secretive central bank in the world. The paper, the New European Way Economic Reform and the Framework for Economic and Monetary Union, also seeks moves towards the Bank of England's system where minutes are published and explanations of decisions are made.
But our own Minister for Finance is likely to be out in the cold on the issue. Mr McCreevy has not seen the document and he has consistently stressed that the ECB's independence is essential and that its emphasis on price stability is appropriate.
This week he repeated that the ECB was already transparent enough and it was not for finance ministers to tell it what to do about publishing minutes or other transparency issues. But some observers are now worried that the Minister's public opposition to his fellow finance ministers could leave him exposed when another issue, that of corporate tax harmonisation, raises its head.
Both the Germans and French are understood to be close to agreeing a proposal which could put our 12.5 per cent rate in jeopardy. Although the Austrians and Luxembourg ministers may naturally be on our side, the most senior serving minister on Ecofin, Mr Jean Claude Junker of Luxembourg, is thought to be particularly against the idea.
The EU leaders are also close to agreeing a package to promote growth and employment across Europe.
Mr Lafontaine and his French counterpart, Mr Dominic Strauss-Kahn, are dismissive of the idea that Europe needs structural changes to boost employment and are particularly cynical about the US view that the supply side is the appropriate response to stimulating growth.
Mr Lafontaine does admit that changes need to be made in increasing labour-market flexibility, reforming pensions and deregulation, but he insists that the demand side has caused most of the problems over the past 20 years and must be tackled first.
He is backed in these views by his economic adviser and secretary of state, Mr Heiner Flassbeck, former chief economist at the left wing DIW research institute in Berlin and by his wife, Ms Christa Muller, a well-known left-wing economist.
They both argue that excessively restrictive Bundesbank policy has been responsible for artificially reducing real growth in Germany.
Indeed, the same argument could be made here. It was only when the tools of monetary management were taken away from our own Central Bank that the economy began to boom. If we had not been set to enter the single currency the Central Bank would have long ago hiked interest rates and growth would undoubtedly already be lower and falling.
The new German government now appears to have bought into this idea. It believes that the continuous contraction of German unit-labour costs risks deflation not only in Germany, but also in the 11 other euro countries. The best option, it says, is to increase real wages to take account of productivity gains; and purchasing-power losses through consumer price growth.
So far, the ECB is continuing to insist that it will concentrate solely on price stability, although in recent speeches its president, Mr Wim Duisenberg, stresses that the ECB Governing Council will look at unemployment statistics, if not actually take them into account.
Of course, at the same time competition is hotting up for Dr Hans Tietmeyer's job when he steps down as president of the Bundesbank at the end of 1999. It appears inconceivable that the job will be given to the former conservative finance minister and Helmut Kohl-appointed Bundesbank vice-president, Mr Juergen Stark. It is even possible that Mr Flassbeck could get the post and then influence the ECB from his seat on the board towards a more liberal monetary policy stance across Europe.
But even right-wing commentators such as the Economist have argued recently that the central banker's ascendancy is now under threat and surprisingly that Mr Lafontaine "may even have a point".
It also warned that without some accountability the ECB will find it hard to secure the kind of public support enjoyed by the Bundesbank. And that its best policy would be openness. Nevertheless, it has decided unlike the Fed or the Bank of England to publish neither the minutes of its policy meetings or details on how members vote.
The other argument from this political perspective is that central bankers have far too narrow a view of inflation and have been ignoring rising asset prices, something which is certainly true here. And as the recent crisis in Japan and East Asia shows, unsustainable booms can happen even when consumer price inflation is low.
