Suchergebnisse

Introduction: European enlargement generally refers to the inclusion of new states into the European Union's Treaty area. This article considers instead the enlargement of Economic and Monetary Union into Africa. We know that no part of Africa is in the EU, though Morocco has sought to join, and the island of Mayotte belongs to an EU member state (France) and uses the euro. But the EU's single currency area is not identical with its monetary area. This article is about EMU beyond the EU itself, and in particular about the monetary shadow European colonial history has cast over western and central Africa. Here as well as in the Comoros islands three local currencies were long in the monetary area of France, and are now but local expressions of the euro. That was why in the late 1990s the impending introduction of the single European currency aroused considerable interest and some anxiety in those African countries that faced possible inclusion in the EU's monetary union. The question was whether the EC institutions should take over responsibly for monetary policy in the former French African overseas territories, although they are not in the EU now, and were never part of the EEC before independence. Alternatively, experts in Europe and in Africa considered whether France should maintain its monetary guarantee, and if so, whether the CFA franc should be decoupled from the future European currency. Finally, the CFA franc zones could simply disappear. Today currencies in the fourteen Francophone states plus those of two of Portugal's former African overseas countries are simply local variants of the euro. This paper briefly puts this strange situation in its historical context, considering what has changed and what has not with the changeover from the franc CFA pegged to the French franc, to a franc CFA pegged to the euro. I shall then ask, together with mainly African economists, political analysts and politicians, whether Africa's proxy euro zone should expand to take in perhaps the entire sub Saharan continent, which has a privileged trade and aid relationship with the EU. Alternatively, do Africans and Europeans see a European monetary zone in Africa as an opportunity or as an anachronistic burden? Do Africans within the zone want to remain tied to the EU to a degree that exists in no other sovereign states outside Europe? Two of the three CFA franc cum euro monetary zones have expanded both in nature and in geographical extent, having become economic unions and taken in two ex Portuguese dependencies. Do these now wish to form even larger units and turn themselves into regional common markets, with a common currency that in reality is not a currency at all, but only one or several local variants of the euro? How do other African states regard such ambitions? The answers to these questions require first a brief historical comment.

Hopkin, B. ; Reddaway, B.: Heading for breakdown. - S. 239-243. Holtham, G.: The Maastricht conception of EMU is obsolete. - S. 244-248. Palmer, J.: Wanted: A compelling vision. - S. 249-252. Radice, G.: The case for a single currency. - S. 252-256. Wolf, M.: Why European integration cannot be built on EMU. - S. 256-260

Europe's financial crisis cannot be blamed on the Euro, Harold James contends in this probing exploration of the whys, whens, whos, and what-ifs of European monetary union. The current crisis goes deeper, to a series of problems that were debated but not resolved at the time of the Euro's invention. Since the 1960s, Europeans had been looking for a way to address two conundrums simultaneously: the dollar's privileged position in the international monetary system, and Germany's persistent current account surpluses in Europe. The Euro was created under a politically independent central bank to meet the primary goal of price stability. But while the monetary side of union was clearly conceived, other prerequisites of stability were beyond the reach of technocratic central bankers. Issues such as fiscal rules and Europe-wide banking supervision and regulation were thoroughly discussed during planning in the late 1980s and 1990s, but remained in the hands of member states. That omission proved to be a cause of crisis decades later. Here is an account that helps readers understand the European monetary crisis in depth, by tracing behind-the-scenes negotiations using an array of sources unavailable until now, notably from the European Community's Committee of Central Bank Governors and the Delors Committee of 1988-89, which set out the plan for how Europe could reach its goal of monetary union. As this foundational study makes clear, it was the constant friction between politicians and technocrats that shaped the Euro. And, Euro or no Euro, this clash will continue into the future.

Inflation differentials in Europe have narrowed substantially since the inception of the European Monetary System in 1979. However, their persistence after more than a decade raises the question of why these differentials are so difficult to eliminate. Some European Community countries systematically use seignorage—financing government expenditures with money creation—while others do not. This increases the difficulty of achieving the convergence of monetary policies and inflation rates required for irrevocably fixed exchange rates in Europe. This paper, utilizing a model of government finance that minimizes the social cost of financing government expenditures, examines monetary finance in the European Community. It rejects soundly the social cost minimization model of seignorage collection.