The viral clip, which was posted to Facebook in late September, came with the caption “The end of the euro, the return of the franc”, in reference to the former French currency.
“Good evening everyone and welcome to this special edition on yesterday’s announcement of the demise of the euro,” said M6 news anchor Nathalie Renoux. She continued with a series of questions on “the end of the common currency” in Europe, which she said would be answered in the programme.
While the report appears genuine at first glance, some Internet users were immediately sceptical: “We are presented with leaders who are no longer in power. In Germany and Spain in particular,” one person commented.
Indeed, the video contains many outdated details. The Spanish prime minister said to have announced the end of the euro to his countrymen is Mariano Rajoy (seen in the screenshot below), who is no longer the head of government there. He was replaced by Pedro Sanchez in 2018.
What is more, the video mentions 17 members of the eurozone, when the euro currency is in fact now used by 20 countries from the European Union (archived here).
We searched for the keywords “M6 end of euro” on X (formerly Twitter) and came across this tweet (archived here) from January 31, 2012: “In its next edition, Capital (M6) will get a reaction out of Marine Le Pen to a fake news story on the end of the euro.”
Invented news story
A Facebook search using the same keywords led us to a longer version of the viral clip. It was located on the site of the M6 programme Capital, which is devoted to economic matters. The archived edition was reposted on August 19, 2021 and came with the following message: “Fiction: What will happen if the euro disappears? In 2012, Capital staff attempted to answer this question.”
In the programme archives on Facebook, we found a series of six fictional episodes on the question of “what if France left the eurozone?” One of them is the viral video.
In other words, the report that has been circulating on social media is none other than a simulation, with no relation to reality.
France’s supposed exit from the eurozone was the subject of debate during the presidential campaign of 2012. The move was supported by Marine Le Pen, who was then head of the National Front party — now known as National Rally — and one of the candidates.
Quoted in an AFP article from October 2011 (archived here), Le Pen insisted on a return to national currencies and urged devaluation, which she said would perhaps make “some products more expensive, but more people would have a job enabling them to buy them”.
Others also spoke out on the subject. The transcript of a debate held by the Cercle des economistes — a French economic think tank — included this quote from Italian economist Elsa Fornero: “Many economists were saying in 2011 and early 2012 that the chance that the euro would disappear within a year was over 50 percent. I can quote Paul Krugman on this.”
It was an outcome that did not materialise. France continues to be a member of the eurozone, which it joined in January 1999 (archived here).
In June 2023, on its website devoted to public life, the French state wrote: “Despite the war in Ukraine, the rise in energy prices and inflation, the euro remained the world’s second most used currency in 2022.”
Monique NGO MAYAG
AFP Sénégal
Translation : Anna Maria JAKUBEK
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