ABSTRACT
This and the next chapter deal with the process of monetary integration within the EU since the 1970s as it has influenced and impacted on British policy and interests. The treatment identifies and accounts for British responses to major developments in this field. In particular, the coverage aims to explain the country’s exclusion from the euro area that currently comprises 19 of the 28 EU member states, with some two-thirds or 337 million of the EU’s population (Lithuania being the latest EU state to adopt the euro in January 2015). In this chapter, we focus on the beginnings of European monetary integration in the period 1970-1992 and especially Britain’s membership of and departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM – see below), the staging system for the formation of the euro area.
