Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows.
A. The treaty tests of a budget deficit no bigger than 3% of the GDP and a public debt converging towards a ceiling of 60% of a GDP seemed impossible for Italy to pass by 1999.
B. That Belgium also had a public debt above 100 percent of GDP helped, as did a special euro tax Mr. Prodi introduced.
C. Into the uncompromising environment came the first of a series of external shocks. One of the earliest was entry into the European single currency, the euro, in 1999.
D. But when it became clear in 1997 that Spain was determined to join from the start, Romano Prodi, then Italian prime minister, decided that Italy, as a founder member of the bloc, must be there too.
E. Germany had more or less designed the 1992 Maastricht treaty’s convergence criteria to keep out a profligate, chronically indebted Italy.
Which of the following sequences is the MOST logically ordered?