During Tietmeyer's tenure as president of the Bundesbank, the Euro was introduced as the currency for most of the EU. Eight months before his retirement, he oversaw the bank's transition to the European System of Central Banks in the course of the creation of Europe's economic and monetary union in January 1999. At the time Tietmeyer forecast that the common currency would lead to painful internal economic adjustments for member states with trade deficits cumulating into debt. Commentator David Marsh in late 2012 drew attention to that forecast as he highlighted "the significant internal devaluations of their currencies though a sharp fall in unit labor costs" which Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, for example, have suffered in the European sovereign-debt crisis of 2008 onward. This effect of the Euro is similar to the impact of "the classical gold standard", wrote Marsh in describing the phenomenon.