ABSTRACT
In the past two years, a new plan for monetary union in Europe has gained widespread popularity. The plan has also invigorated the initiative to build a single currency area among EC countries - an initiative that has been a recurrent feature of the debate on European monetary policy throughout the post-war period. Indeed, many observers now believe that the achievement of a monetary union is highly likely: C. Fred Bergsten states that Western Europe is 'almost certain to go beyond "completion of the internal market" to an Economic and Monetary Union, or EMU' (Bergsten 1990: 97, my italics).
