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. Tietmeyer published more than 100 articles on the subject of economics and was the recipient of many prestigious awards and prizes and was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. From January until March 2000, with former President Roman Herzog and former federal judge Paul Kirchhof, Tietmeyer led an independent commission to investigate the CDU donations scandal. He later served on as President of the EBS University of Business and Law from 2000 until 2009. Tietmeyer served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) from 2003 until 2010. In addition, he held the following positions:   Tietmayer married Marie-Luise Flossdorf, with whom he had two children. After her death in 1978 he married Marie-Therese Kalff.