The EMU : Forerunners and Durability

The European Community is stepping tentatively toward a European Monetary Union (EMU) that would replace most of Western Europe's currencies with a single money, perhaps called the European Currency Unit (ECU). No previous monetary union ever involved such a large portion of the world economy or resulted in the disappearance of so many major trading currencies. Historical evidence presented here suggests that a durable monetary union requires that one monetary authority control policy for the entire union and that it have sufficient power to enforce the agreement on the member nations