ABSTRACT
The EU came into existence on 1 November 1993. It had a troubled birth. Its gestation had lasted since Robert Schuman’s speech of May 1950, which had led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951–52. In 1957–58 the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) had come to life. Of these three it was the EEC that prospered most, and it became known generally as the European Community (EC). It focused on economic integration and by the end of 1992 had not only created a number of policies in key sectors of the economies of the member states but had also moved beyond a customs union to a single market. Arguably it was the very success of this enterprise that persuaded some, such as Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, that there needed to be another step in the process of integration, namely Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), particularly but not exclusively the move to a single currency. By 1988 the member states of the EC were beginning to contemplate such a move seriously and began the series of steps that led to the agreement in December 1989 to convene an intergovernmental conference (IGC) on EMU and on changing the founding treaties of the EC in order to accommodate such a development. The IGC was well-prepared and led eventually to agreement at Maastricht, in December 1991, on the steps and the conditions upon which EMU should be created as part of a Treaty on European Union and thus as an aspect of the new EU.
