Helmut Kohl: I acted like a dictator to bring in the euro

04-10-2013 • http://www.telegraph.co, By Jeevan Vasagar

In an interview conducted for a journalist's PhD thesis, Germany's longest-serving postwar chancellor said that he would have lost any popular vote on the euro by an overwhelming majority.

"I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany," he said. "We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That's quite clear. I would have lost and by seven to three."

The interview was conducted by Jens Peter Paul, a German journalist in 2002, the year when the Deutsche Mark was replaced by euro notes and coins, but has only been published now.

In it, Mr Kohl describes adopting the euro as an emblem of the European project, which he said had prevented war on the continent. Born in 1930, Mr Kohl's politics were shaped by his country's history in the 1930s and 1940s; his final years in power were focused on promoting European unity.