It's worse than that. Europe spent the 20 years after the end of the Gold Standard trying and failing to maintain a fixed exchange regime. Also, prior to the Great Depression, European Countries were central to the failure of the previous incarnation of the Gold Standard, both contributing to causing the crisis and to prolong it. Somehow Continental European economic policy makers just don't get fiat money and are enamored of "money as a thing" common-sense economics.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman