Demands for control of the expanding Euromarkets have been voiced for some time. On what grounds are they based? What form could this control take? These issues are discussed by Manfred Lahnstein. Further comments on these problems can be found in the following article by Wilfried Guth.

This study grounds the establishment of EMU and the euro in the context of the history of international monetary cooperation and of monetary unions, above all in the U.S., Germany and Italy. The purpose of national monetary unions was to reduce transactions costs of multiple currencies and...

There are some striking similarities between the pre 1914 gold standard and EMU today. Both arrangements are based on fixed exchange rates, monetary and fiscal orthodoxy. Each regime gave easy access by financially underdeveloped peripheral countries to capital from the core countries. But the...