ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the problems and conflicts related to the move towards Economic and Monetary Union which precipitated the latest changes in the founding Treaties and the adoption of a new name: the European Union (EU). The EU’s decision–making process operates within a framework of interlocking institutions and agencies that at most levels is more like the decision–making process in a federal state than it is in an international organization. The role of intergovernmentalism in the management of policy convergence, operates at two levels: one within the framework of the Union’s institutions; the other outside of it. The arguments at the time the Exchange Rate Mechanism is establishes have continued to be important as the member states have sought mechanisms to further economic convergence. The degree of integration and convergence of policy–making and harmonization of laws in the EU is therefore much more extensive than anything that has imagined in North American Free Trade Agreement.
