Quite often Europeans tend to name the Euro as the source of a lot of diseases that the economies are suffering internally in the last years.  Having a strong currency it is said to have a negative impact in the Trade Account of the euro zone members.  Quite often we tend to forget that the second biggest export of the whole world is Germany and they sell in EUR as well.

Another issue is also that if the Euro zone has a deficit in the trade balance (-22.9 USD bn up to Feb 2011) is for an obvious situation: the purchases surpass the sales. 

     Which ones are the goods that the European countries have to buy from foreign countries?

The main one is the oil and everything related to energetic sources (Germany has the 4.2% of the world oil demand, France 3.2% and Italy 2.6%.  Traditionally the Brent and West Texas price is stand at USD.  We can see in the slide bellow that the average price in 2009 was 61, 37 $/bn, in 2010 79, 8 $/bn and during the first trimester of 2011 we have already reached 104,4 $/bn.  Most of the goods exported by euro countries travel to destination by ship and by

BRENT PRICE

If the JPY and GBP have appreciated against the EUR, and those two countries (even being islands are still in the top ten world exports). Is it accurate a monetary policy that depreciates the EUR to boost the exports? Would not be bigger the disadvantages than the gains obtained?