Search results

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.

In monetary unions, monetary policy is typically made by delegates of the member countries. This procedure raises the possibility of strategic delegation—that countries may choose the types of delegates to influence outcomes in their favor. We show that without commitment in monetary policy, strategic delegation arises if and only if three conditions are met: shocks affecting individual countries are not perfectly correlated, risk‐sharing across countries is imperfect, and the Phillips curve is nonlinear. Moreover, inflation rates are inefficiently high. We argue that ways of solving the commitment problem, including the emphasis on price stability in the agreements constituting the European Union, are especially valuable when strategic delegation is a problem.

Is European Monetary Union desirable? Pascal Salin, of the Univeristy of Paris, argues that any system of fixed exchange rates such as the EMS Exchange Rate Mechanism, is likely to prove unsatisfactory.

The purpose of this article is to provide a political economy rationale that helps explain why some non-central European economies, featuring highly idiosyncratic disturbances and apparently low inflation bias inefficiencies, seem so eager to enter the European Monetary Union (EMU). The main message from the paper is that because these economies normally display a high degree of domestic political uncertainty, the "economic costs" arising from the decision to surrender monetary policy may in fact be less severe than the "political costs" of opting out of EMU and then possibly facing undesired inflation upsurges in the future. ; O objetivo deste artigo é sugerir um argumento de economia política que ajude a explicar porque alguns países periféricos da Europa, que apresentam choques econômicos altamente idiossincráticos, e que conseguiram controlar o problema do viés inflacionário recentemente, apresentam elevado desejo de ingressar na União Monetária Européia. A principal mensagem do artigo é que, devido ao elevado grau de incerteza e polaridade política presentes nestas economias, os "custos econômicos" de se delegar hoje a política monetária a um agente externo, podem se mostrar menores que os "custos políticos" de não adesão caso um governo com preferências inflacionárias mais amenas venha a vencer as eleições futuras.

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

Monetary unions of the past had a better chance of success if economic policies of the participating states were in harmony. Example: The Scandinavian Monetary Union in contrast to the Latin Monetary Union. 0 Since harmony of economic policies could not be maintained under political stress (in the First World War), even the Scandinavian Union failed. .1 0 The only cases where monetary unions have survived up toQiow are those of general political, economic, and monetary unification: Switzerland, Italy and Germany. In monetary matters, the centralizing of decisions has been a minimum requirement for the success of a union. 0 No historical monetary union has brought about political unification. It has always been the other way round.